Les touristes

Peasants' professor

Not many university rectors can fire a Sten gun. Even fewer have lived through Siberian exile, endured starvation, raised a siege, defied a government, founded a discipline, and in retirement returned to serve the land of their boyhood persecution.

So if Teodor Shanin, 71, is the toughest-looking gong-holder at Buckingham Palace next month, when the Queen awards him the OBE for services to Russian tertiary education, it is because life has made him so. Otherwise the eminent sociologist and creator of the first Russian-British university would never have survived.

Despite his harsh childhood experiences under Stalin, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Shanin felt "an obligation", as one of the few British academics who spoke Russian, to help rebuild the country. His idea was to create a new Russian-British university to train and retrain Russian professionals and academics.

By 1992 he had raised money from the British Council, the Macarthur Foundation and the Hungarian financier George Soros, with the Russian government agreeing to pay 10% of the cost and provide a building. Neither materialised. After a series of broken promises, he called a meeting with the Russian education minister to cancel the project.

Eventually, in 1995, backed by the Russian Academy of National Economy, but not the Russian government, the new Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences opened. Today it runs MBAs and masters courses for Russian sociologists, lawyers, social workers, political scientists, and cultural and educational managers, taught predominantly by Russian academics trained in England, and validated by Manchester and Kingston Universities.

Shanin, who is now retired from Manchester and spends four weeks out of five in Moscow as the school's first rector, still has battles on his hands. The first year's promised Russian money did not arrive. This year, academy rents and facilities charges rocketed unexpectedly.

It sounds a typical story of corruption and chaos - the only story westerners tend to hear about Russia. Concerned about precisely that, Shanin has for some time been taking groups of lawyers, businesspeople and journalists to Russia to see the self-sacrifice and idealism - including that of his own staff - which never make the headlines. "For a year my staff worked on two-thirds salaries. Now we have another crisis and they have agreed to cut their salaries by 10%. To work with such people is an honour."

But nevertheless not combat-free. Though would the professor want it otherwise? "Moscow is a most peculiar environment: difficult interesting, exciting. When I come back to England, for my first few days there's an incredible relief. To be somewhere you don't have to fight like hell simply to survive, where people smile at you in the street.

"But after a week I often begin to feel under-used. I am ready for hard work. Not for a row. I don't look for rows. I am a gentle man. But I will not give way if I think I am right."

Until Teodor was 10, the Shanins had led a comfortable and secure life as wealthy, intellectual, Polish-speaking Jews in the Russian city of Vilnius. His mother was a university graduate; his father, who fought as a stu dent alongside workers and peasants in the 1917 Revolution, ran the family galoshes factory.

Then, in 1941, Stalin's police arrived at the Shanin bourgeois front door. Teodor's father was to be imprisoned in Siberia. Teodor and his mother were to follow him into exile. Teodor's younger sister, a frail four-year-old, was left behind with their grandfather.

Weeks after the family's departure, the Nazis marched into Vilnius and murdered every Jew in the city. Teodor and his mother travelled first to Siberia and, a year later, by cattle train to Samarkand.

Samarkand's black marketeers almost immediately offered the newly arrived 11-year-old a "job" carrying loaves stolen from the state-owned bakery. Over the next two years he and his mother lived off his earnings until his father arrived: "It was impossible to do the bread any more. To me it was a game. But my father was afraid of doing something illegal. You can only do this when you are not afraid. Once you are afraid, your eyes will give you away."

Instead his parents sent him to school. He raced through the grades, matriculating a year early at 17 when his family left Eastern Europe for France. On their way they stopped in Vilnius, searching fruitlessly for his sister. Enraged by her loss, he was spoiling for a fight: "I was a violent Zionist. I wanted to get arms and go to Palestine. That was my reaction to what had happened to me."

By March 1948 he was there. He spent two months learning Hebrew, and then joined Palmah, the SAS equivalent of Israel's proto-army.

When the war ended he trained as a social worker and took a job in the poorest Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. His clients' conditions appalled him. He entered left-wing politics; took a part-time degree in sociology and economics and then made his way to Britain.

When Shanin arrived in 1963 at Birmingham University's Centre for Russian and East European Studies, he was homeless and jobless. Despite making angrily clear his lack of interest in the subject suggested by his supervisor, he began a PhD on the peasants' role in the Russian Revolution. It was the start of an academic career that would last almost 50 years, and an entirely new research field known as peasantology.

Peasants inhabit an economic structure entirely different from either capitalism or socialist state ownership, he came to argue. Their work, food and housing are dependent on what he calls the "informal economy" - the network of family, unofficial and even criminal activity.

Marxist and market economists had always dismissed such activity as marginal. He argued: "How can you call it marginal when half of mankind lives like this?"

His books included Peasants and Peasant Society and The Awkward Class. Colleagues, unsurprisingly, nicknamed him Awkward Teodor. He had a burst of cult status as a Sheffield University lecturer in the late 60s, when radical students and academics fell upon the argument that Vietnamese peasants, secure in their informal economy, would not want to be "liberated" by American capitalism.

In 1970 Shanin left Sheffield to become professor of sociology at Haifa University, which then had the most Arab students in Israel. Almost at once he was embroiled in a row. The university, on security service advice, had dismissed a Palestinian lecturer whose uncle was a political radical. Shanin and three colleagues protested in the senate: "We had a vicious argument. It's not like Britain where everybody is polite and nice even if they hate each other. It's Israel. So we shouted."

They also lost. He joined the political opposition and the Peace Now campaign. He had fought for Israeli independence under a promise that Arabs would be equal citizens in the new land. None of it had made any difference. His eyes are watery now as he remembers: "After three years I said I wouldn't live in a land like South Africa. I said I never took from this country anything. I always gave it. I am going."

He returned to England in 1973, together with his wife, Shulamit Ramon, professor of social work at Anglia Polytechnic University. After a brief spell in Oxford he was offered a chair of sociology at Manchester. He stayed there for 25 years, taking British nationality, travelling to research the informal economy, the Russian Revolution, the development of Africa, peasants across the world.

During the 1980s, on a visit to Russia, his Soviet "minders" warned him against meeting unapproved academics. They picked the wrong man for a fight. "I told them to get lost. I said, I am not your subject. I am a subject of the Queen of England." The Russians refused him a subsequent visa; he encouraged the British Council to retaliate by refusing visas to Russian academics. The stand-off lasted four years before the Russians caved in.

Karen Gold, The Guardian, Tuesday 10 September 2002 01.11

A Hole in the Sea

Barry Flanagan, A Hole in the Sea, 1969

(exhibition copy for the show “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013″ at Fondazione Prada, Venice).

Goodness

A tenderness so great welled up in him that upon seeing

A wounded sparrow, he was ready to burst into tears.

Beneath the flawless manners of a worldly gentleman he hid

His compassion for all that is living.

Some people perhaps could sense it, but it was certainly known,

In ways mysterious to us, to the small birds

That would perch on his head and hands when he stopped

In a park alley. They would eat from his hands

As if the law that demands that the smaller

Take shelter from the larger,

Lest it be devoured, was suspended.

As if time had turned back, and the paths

Of the heavenly garden shone anew.

I had trouble understanding this man

Since what he said betrayed his knowledge of the horror of the world,

A knowledge at some point known and experienced to the very core.

I thus asked myself how he had managed to quell

His rebellion and bring himself to such humble charity.

Probably because this world, evil but existing,

He thought better than one that did not exist.

But he also believed in the immaculate beauty of the earth

from before the fall of Adam.

Whose free decision had brought death upon humans and animals.

But this was already something my mind didn't know how to accept.

Czeslaw Milosz

translated from the Polish by Anthony Milosz

Merrit from California Lives

Eleanor Antin, Merrit from California Lives, 1969; replicated 1998. Gasoline can, bush hat with “peace” decal, metal comb, and text panel. Dimensions variable. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

Ice Queen

5 a.m. (4 a.m. EST)

The island from above
Became a hook, gesturing.
Filled with sounds,
The shape of three fingers.

The family, bereft,
Witness to the 5 a.m.
The bruise-colored money left.
The motorcade on the left.

The slit, a haiku:
Focused, deep as a tap.
To stab a man,
To write a haiku.

Crimson almost-morning:
The abettor.
Bermuda has
One more flower.


I could feel the gushing of morning coming on.
The road acted its role admirably.
I was a visitor in an intimate land of hand-violence.
The sky was a place of water-stitched clouds.
The houses were each colored like a type of Bermuda wound.
You juggled the affliction of the parking lot passing,
The gift of being native to somewhere.

The cricket song stabbed the night, black as the soles of my feet.
I paid to touch down here, to view the throbbing iguana.
I enjoy my subtropical epiphany, that people die in Bermuda.
I bested the palm’s best frond.
I was an hour older than myself.
The flowers shattered the silence of the monochrome,
The unfinished cathedral of St. Catherine.
And I see the drink in the air, I see the breeze sagging with storm,
I note it all, I note the shadows of the palms, lazy, tanning;
I note the white bones of the gravestones and
the whiter bones below.






Megan Amram, 2013

Vinciane Despret @ SPEAP (Extrait)

Lucian’s Trips to the Moon | The Public Domain Review

Lucian’s Trips to the Moon | The Public Domain Review

Depiction of the moon featured on the front cover of a 1911 edition of Plutarch on the face which appears on the orb of the Moon, translated by A.O. Pickard 

Bibelots

Bibelots, Venice 2013

2.5.04

common man

blue jays are starry
            bullets of morning-glory
                        little weights keep pace

hunker down in vectors
            blue forest room
                        latched brain-tree

hope of clear eyeballing
            boundless country sprawl
                        heavy sky patchwork

look landmarks of misdirection!
            look crowd of prophets
                        lighting the fence

Karen Weiser, 2005.

Set Model for the Time each Morning at which Daylight First Begins

Set Model for the Time each Morning at which Daylight First Begins, 2013

Wood, 33 x 10 x 8 cm

House of the Suicide

John Hejduk. House of the Suicide, from the Lancaster/Hanover Masque. 1980-1982. Coloured wash with glaze and white and red pencil, 20.3 x 22.8 cm. CCA Collection

Troglodyte

_{Brassai, Troglodyte, grottes à Véteuil, gelatin silver print, 1935}

Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture

_{Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture pairs four key twentieth-century sculptures by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-96), Hans Haacke (b. 1936), Andy Warhol (1928-87) and Robert Smithson (1938-73) with a series of ancient objects including Neolithic jades, a yet to be named mineral, fragments of Roman sculpture and a collection of eoliths. Each pairing explores how objects resist the origins, names and histories humans accord to them. Each of these American artists made radical shifts in the understanding of what sculpture might be, using acts of naming and rethinking ways of displaying artworks. The ancient objects, all held in museum collections, challenge boundaries of classification, their histories and meanings ambiguous and unknown.}

 Robert Smithson
'Asphalt Lump'
1969
Asphalt

_{Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture explores how matter can be both indifferent and contingent on encounter, exploring the malleability of meaning and the ways in which objects are accorded cultural and historical value}

Figure
Date unknown 
Marble

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds


25th July -20th October 2013


_{http://www.henry-moore.org}

The Rag Picker's Hut

Eugène Atget, Villa d'un Chiffonier ( The Rag Picker's Hut ) from the portfolio "Eugène Atget Portfolio, Twenty Photographic Prints from his Original Glass Plate Negatives" 1910 (published 1956).

Labour and Wait

This exhibition features the work of artists who bring 21st-century urgency to 19th-century principles of virtue through work and craftsmanship. Inspired in part by developments that stem back as far as the Industrial Revolution, the presentation examines contemporary culture’s obsession with authenticity, the hand-crafted, and the politics of manufacturing and labor. Works in the exhibition date from the late 1980s to the present, a period in which artists turned from industrial fabrication and a seamless aesthetic to hand-made or "do-it-yourself" sensibilities.

_{Labour and Wait is organized by Julie Joyce, Curator of Contemporary Art, and features artists/artist collaboratives from Europe, South America, and the United States, many which are under-represented in museums on the West Coast. Artists include Tonico Lemos Auad, Andrea Bowers, Colin Darke, Wim Delvoye, Theaster Gates, Dewar and Gicquel, Fischli and Weiss, Tim Hawkinson, Josiah McElheny, Grayson Perry, Mika Rottenberg, Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler, Allison Smith, Ricky Swallow, David Thorpe, and Jane Wilbraham.}

Santa Barbara Museum of Art


July 2 – September 22, 2013

www.sbma.net

Rubber Soul

Women packaging the Beatles’ album Rubber Soul at the Hayes Vynil Factory, England.

Star Maps

Beverly Hills, LA 

House for "Woman's Home Companion"

House for "Woman's Home Companion" (1948, mixed media), by architect A. James Speyer and model maker Theodore Conrad.

The Eternal Eye

Grete Stern, The Eternal Eye, 1950

Όχι Μπραζίλια μα Οκτάνα


Όταν δια της πίστεως και της καλής θελήσεως, αλλά 
και από επιτακτικήν, αδήριτον ανάγκην δημιουργηθούν 
αι προϋποθέσεις και εκτελεσθούν όχι οικοδομικά, ή 
ορθολογιστικά, μα διαφορετικά τελείως έργα, εις 
την καρδιά του μέλλοντος, εις την καρδιά των υψηλών  
οροπεδίων και προ παντός μέσα στην καρδιά του κάθε 
ανθρώπου, θα υπάρξη τότε μόνον η Νέα Πόλις και 
θα ονομασθή πρωτεύουσα της ηνωμένης, της αρραγούς 
και αδιαιρέτου Οικουμένης. 
  Άγνωστον αν η παλαιά, που εκτείνεται προ του 
ωκεανού στα πόδια του κατακορύφου βράχου που μοιάζει 
με το Τζέμπελ-αλ-Ταρέκ, άγνωστον αν θα εγκαταλειφθή, 
ή αν θα υφίσταται καν στα χρόνια εκείνα, ή αν, απέραντη 
και κενή, θα διατηρηθή ως δείγμα μιάς ελεεινής, μιας 
αποφράδος εποχής, ή ως θλιβερόν μουσείον διδακτικόν, 
πλήρες παραδειγμάτων πρό αποφυγήν. Εκείνο που είναι 
βέβαιον είναι ότι η Νέα Πόλις θα οικοδομηθή, ή μάλλον 
θα δημιουργηθή, και θα είναι η πρωτεύουσα του 
Νέου Κόσμου, εις την καρδιά του μέλλοντος και των 
ανθρώπων, μετά χρόνια πολλά, οδυνηρά, βλακώδη και 
ανιαρά, ίσως μετά μιαν άλωσιν οριστικήν, μετά την 
μάχην την τρομακτικήν του επερχομένου Αρμαγεδδώνος. 
  Δεν θα εξετάσω τας λεπτομερείας..... 

.................... 

Αυτό που με ενδιαφέρει απολύτως-και θα έπρεπε να 
ενδιαφέρη όλους-είναι ότι η Νέα Πόλις θα 
ολοκληρωθή, θα γίνη. Όχι βεβαίως απο αρχιτέκτονας 
και πολεοδόμους οιηματίας, που ασφαλώς πιστεύουν 
οι καημένοι, ότι μπορούν αυτοί τους βίους των 
ανθρώπων εκ των προτέρων να ρυθμίζουν και το μέλλον 
της ανθρωπότητος, με χάρακες, με υποδεκάμετρα, γωνίες 
και Τ, μέσα στα σχέδια της φιλαυτίας των, 
ναρκισσευόμενοι (μαρξιστικά, φασιστικά ή αστικά),πνίγοντες 
και πνιγόμενοι να κανονίζουν.  
  Όχι, δεν θα κτισθή η Νέα Πόλις έτσι, μα θα κτισθή από 
όλους τους ανθρώπους, όταν οι άνθρωποι. έχοντας εξαντλήσει 
τας αρνήσεις, και τας καλάς και τας κακάς, βλέποντες το 
αστράπτον φως της αντισοφιστείας-τουτέστι το φως της άνευ 
δογμάτων, άνευ ενδυμάτων Αληθείας-παύσουν στα αίματα και 
στα βαριά αμαρτήματα χέρια και πόδια να βυθίζουν, και 
αφήσουν μέσα στις ψυχές των, με οίστρον καταφάσεως, όλα 
τα δένδρα της Εδέμ, με πλήρεις καρπούς και δίχως 
όφεις-μα τον Θεό, ή τους Θεούς-τελείως ελεύθερα να ανθίσουν. 
  Ναι, ναι (αμήν, αμήν λέγω υμίν),σας λέγω την αλήθειαν. 
Η Νέα Πόλις θα κτισθή και δεν θα είναι χθαμαλή σε 
βαλτοτόπια. Θα οικοδομηθή στα υψίπεδα της Οικουμένης, 
μα δεν θα ονομασθή Μπραζίλια, Σιών, Μόσχα, ή Νέα Υόρκη, 
αλλά θα ονομασθή η πόλις αυτή  Ο κ τ ά ν α . 
Και τώρα ο καθείς θα διερωτηθή ευλόγως: Μα τι θα πή Οκτάνα;  

............................. 

  Και τώρα (αμήν, αμήν) λέγω υμίν : 
  Οκτάνα, φίλοι μου, θα πή μεταίχμιον της Γης και του 
Ουρανού, όπου το ένα στο άλλο επεκτεινόμενο ένα τα δύο κάνει. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή πύρ, κίνησις, ενέργεια, λόγος σπέρμα. 
  Οκτάνα θα πη έρως ελεύθερος με όλας τας ηδονάς του. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή ανά πάσαν στιγμήν ποίησις, όμως όχι ως μέσον 
εκφράσεως μόνον, μα ακόμη ως λειτουργία του 
πνεύματος διηνεκής. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή η εντελέχεια εκείνη, που αυτό που είναι 
αδύνατον να γίνη αμέσως το κάνει εν τέλει δυνατόν, ακόμη και 
την χίμαιραν, ακόμη και την ουτοπίαν, ίσως μια μέρα και 
την αθανασίαν του σώματος και όχι μονάχα της ψυχής. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή το "εγώ"  "εσύ" να γίνεται (και αντιστρόφως 
το "εσύ"  "εγώ" ) εις μίαν εκτόξευσιν ιμερικήν, εις μίαν 
έξοδον λυτρωτικήν, εις μίαν ένωσιν θεοτικήν, εις μίαν 
μέθεξιν υπέρτατην, που ίσως αυτή να αποτελή την θείαν Χάριν, 
το θαύμα του εντός και εκτός εαυτού, κάθε φοράν που 
εν εκστάσει συντελείται. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή πάση θυσία διατήρησις της παιδικής ψυχής 
εις όλα τα στάδια της ωριμότητος, εις όλας τας 
εποχάς του βίου................. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή εν πλήρει αθωότητι Αδάμ, εν πλήρει 
βεβαιότητι Αδάμ-συν-Εύα. 

................................. 

  Οκτάνα θα πή απόλυτος ενότης πνεύματος και ύλης. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή παντού και πάντα εν ηδονή ζωή. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή δικαιοσύνη. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή αγάπη. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή παντού και πάντα καλωσύνη. 
  Οκτάνα θα πή η αγαλλίασις εκείνη που φέρνει στα χείλη 
την ψυχή και εις τα όργανα τα κατάλληλα με ορμήν το σπέρμα. 

.................................. 

  Οκτάνα θα πή ό,τι στους ουρανούς και επί της γης ηκούετο, 
κάθε φοράν που ως μέγας μαντατοφόρος, με έντασιν 
υπερκοσμίου τηλεβόα, ο Άγγελος Κυρίου εβόα. 

............................... 

                   

Aνδρέας Εμπειρίκος, Γλυφάδα,  20. 8. 1965

Mother Earth Magazine

The first issue of the “Mother Earth News”, USA, 1970.

Ship overturned

Ship overturned, 2013

wood, plywood, canvas, dust, soil, acrylic, oil, rubber, 160 x 85 x 25 cm 

Squared -up sketch for the decorative elements of ship and flags to be erected over the pediment of the Admiralty 's site elevation in Mstislav Dobuzhinky's scheme, 1918

Rhetoric, Between the Theory and Practice of Politics

 As one of the consequences of the lingering process of corrosion of the rationalist assumptions of the Enlightenment project, in the last decades we have witnessed an attempt in different areas of the humanities to revive the central role rhetoric used to have in antiquity. Despite its political origins, however, the contribution of political theory to this important endeavor has only come of late, as more and more theorists have started to expose the rhetorical nature of politics in multiple manners: showing how it can be used to offer more sophisticated accounts of public deliberation, more attentive toward emotive aspects and contexts; or revealing it as an important manifestation of practical reason; or studying its presence in canonical thinkers and critical moments in the history of political thought; or finally, taking it as an inspiring source for a post-foundationalist emancipatory political theory. This variety of approaches testifies to the pervasiveness of the rhetorical dimensions in the whole realm of politics, from action to theory. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars coming from disciplines such as political theory, philosophy, history, literature, or communication, to debate the multifaceted significance of rhetoric in politics and to explore new ways to incorporate a ‘rhetorical perspective’ in the study of political thought. Our hope is that this event could offer an important moment to assess and foster the still incipient revival of rhetoric in this area.

Keynote Speakers:Bryan Garsten (Yale University), Benedetto Fontana (Baruch College, CUNY), Marco Geuna (University of Milan), James Martin (Goldsmiths, University of London), Javier Roiz (Complutense University of Madrid), Eugene Garver (St. John's University), Kari Palonen (University of Jyväskylä)

Participants:Salvatore di Piazza (University of Palermo), Francesca Piazza (University of Palermo), Mauro Serra (University of Salerno), James David Hodgson (University of York), Lisa S. Villadsen and Christian Kock (University of Copenhagen), Katia A. Lima (University of Sherbrooke), Andreas Hetzel (University of Darmstadt), Annika Thiem (Villanova University), Sophia Hatzisavvidou (Goldsmiths, University of London), Maria Paula Lago (CEHUM), Nomi Claire Lazar (University of Ottawa), Marko Stamenkovic (Ghent University), Marina Lacroix (independent scholar) and Thomas van Neerbos (University of Amsterdam), Erik De Bom (KU Leuven), Olivia Leboyer (IEP Paris), Stuart Ingham (University of Exeter), Daniel Blanch (CIDEFA Intercultural Research Centre), Francisco Corrales (independent scholar), Russell Bentley (Southampton University), Larissa M. Atkison (University of Toronto), David Erland Isaksen (Texas Christian University), Henry Kelly (Trinity College Dublin), Steven Leddin (University of Limerick), Ozgur Emrah Gurel (University of Amsterdam), Juan Luis Conde (Complutense University of Madrid), Jesús Tovar (Autonomous University of Mexico State) and Carlos Moreira (Autonomous University of Baja California), Jorge Loza-Balparda (Complutense University of Madrid), Chris Tallent (Brown University), Geoff Bright, John Schostak (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Jill Schostak (independent scholar), Jonas Van Vossole (CES Coimbra / Ghent University), David Marshall (University of Pittsburgh), Neil Foxlee (University of Central Lancashire), Samuel Hayat (University Paris 8 / CRESPPACSU), Simon Lambek (University of Toronto), Daniel Schut (University of Amsterdam), Arnaldo M. A. Gonçalves (Portuguese Catholic University), José A. Colen (CEHUM), Attila Gyulai (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Keith Topper (University of California, Irvine), Matthew Hoye (European University Institute), Don Paul Abbott (University of California, Davis), Neofytos Aspriadis (University of Piraeus), Athanassios N. Samaras and Dogani Myrsini (University of Piraeus), Alexandru I. Cârlan and Alexandra Zaharia (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest)

CEHUM – Grupo de Teoria Politica, University of Minho

Braga, Portugal

June 21-22, 2013

https://sites.google.com/site/cehumfilosofiapolitica/destaques-1/upcoming-events/cfp-rhetoric-between-the-theory-and-practice-of-politics/program

Die Arbeit

    Strastnaya Square:A tram with Labour slogans from VSKh, the supreme Economic Soviet,1918-19

True Story

Is signifier so mighty as to determinate the subject's destiny? In a certain way, psychoanalysts think so. However, the affair is not so simple. Between de unconscious determinism and the subjet, there is the dark and still undeniable mechanism of the subjectiv choice. In the end, what is destiny for psychoanalysis? The following story may help us to revisit this problem. Good Luck Mr. Gorsky True story: When Apollo mission astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous “ one step for man, one giant leap for mankind ” statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and mission control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark “ Good luck Mr. Gorsky ”. Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival soviet cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the russian or american space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the “ good luck Mr. Gorsky ” statement meant but Armstrong always just smiled. On july 5, 1995 (in Tampa Bay Fl.) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, “Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!”. True story!

Text by Gustavo Dessal

http://www.lacanian.net

Six Possibilities for a Sculpture

Six Possibilities for a Sculpture, installation view, La Loge 2013 - image: Isabelle Arthuis

In an art world of endless possibilities, can we talk about only six possibilities for a sculpture? Taking its title from a work by Hedwig Houben, this exhibition presents the work of five artists who embraces sculpture as an active force rather than static object.



Hedwig Houben and Jennifer Tee both employ sculpture and performance, but while Houben’s work explores her own thinking process from a conceptual and humoristic angle, Tee’s taps into more ethereal or mystical sources for her performances that combine dance and craft-based objects. Caroline Achaintre uses drawing as the starting point for her ceramic works and hand-tufted rugs, which bring together references to the applied arts and to shamanistic practices. Emmanuelle Lainé examines the intersection between the two- and the three-dimensional, creating large-scale images that blur the boundaries between object and subject, process and outcome. Robert Orchardson’s sculptures and installations take as their starting point the shifting meaning and appearance of theatrical stage sets, creating enigmatic yet eloquent forms.


Featuring several new works made especially for this site and occasion, the exhibition draws upon the history of La Loge - a former Masonic lodge, whose architecture is imbued with the materials and symbols of its former ritual use - to explore the totemic presence of sculpture.




A group show featuring Caroline Achaintre
 Hedwig Houben
 Emmanuelle Lainé 
Robert Orchardson 
Jennifer Tee.

Curated by Zoë Gray

La Loge, Brussels

http://www.la-loge.be

Kitsch Prothesis

X|A (Erick Carcamo, Nefeli Chatzimina) is organizing an international workshop of Advanced Architectural Design, part of an ongoing academic research, which introduces participants into contemporary discussions of formal exploration in Architecture and Art, through technical attainment of design and production.

WHALE Architects [Lyda Lycourioti& Iris Lycourioti], Kostis Velonis, Georgia Mavragani and Stefanos Ziras. Three Architects, a Visual Artist and a Director, will discuss on the X|A Theme 2013: “Kitsch Prothesis”

Friday 5th of July at 6pm @ The Benaki Museum, Athens

http://www.xatelier.com/workshop

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

Local Myths

Jennifer Tee, Local Myths

Carrara Marble

325 x 22 x 22 cm

semi-permanent 

Anxiety rises

Magnus Thierfelder, Anxiety rises, 2013 (digital print on paper 17x 21 cm).

Outline

Adam Gillam, Outline, 2013, courtesy the artist and Tintype, London.

Head

Sanne Mestrom, Head, 2012

Unglazed ceramic & timber

HxWxD: 60x40x35cm (ceramic); 120x40x20cm (timber)

Revival of Urban Istanbul

By 關譚

The transformation of the urban environment and our living spaces has become the primary strategy of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AK Party and its stranglehold over the government and municipalities of Turkey. 

These new urban policies have become a means of justifying segregation, neoliberal capitalist lifestyle, indebtedness, exploitation, racism, corruption, and a generalized state of exception that violates our human rights. 

The Gezi Park occupation in Istanbul is a continuation of an urban movement that has transformed into a public movement. It is not only about protecting a green space against demolition for a new shopping mall and “reconstruction” of an “Ottoman” military barracks. It is a symbol of being together, of commoning in spite of our differences in Istanbul. 

The month of April saw protests against the demolition of Emek Theater—a historical place that attracted people from different classes and environments over many years. In addition to political organizations, many opposition groups, neighborhood movements, and cultural movements were activated. 

A few hundred people then occupied Gezi Park on 28 May. One of the organizers picked up a microphone and suggested that everyone meet each other. We turned our bodies and offered our hand, told each other our names, and met.

After police entered at 4am with tear gas and started to burn the tents, more people gathered in the afternoon of 29 May. At 5am on 30 May the police brutally attacked the gathering. People began to return at 9 that morning. By 10am on 30 May the public had gathered. 

By the evening, thousands more people had arrived—not only other opposition movements, but even Islamic groups, football fans, and anti-authoritarian groups. The peaceful environment of reading books, singing, dancing, talking, eating popcorn and rice from street food vendors created a total environment of togetherness in spite of our differences. As Carlo Petrini has said, coming together in an unorganized way through meeting, getting know each other, and friendship, is vitally important for starting a movement. 

After their brutal attack on 31 May, the police barricaded the park. When the public called for a press meeting to protest the attack and reenter the park, only a few hundred gathered, and I lost hope for a moment. 

When we approached the barricade to try reentering, the police used force again with teargas and powerful water cannons. The attack continued until noon, as did the fight back. 

The teargas is made from a strong chemical that disables you and renders you partially blind. Several people were injured. The luxury hotels around the park such as Divan Hotel let the protestors and activists inside and helped them. 

People went to Taksim Square, which was partially under construction by the government to create a pedestrian walkway doubling as high ground for surveillance. The Taksim Square project was criticized and protested several times by many NGOs and organizations within Istanbul. 

The peaceful protest that was only about sitting together at the entrance of İstiklâl—one of Istanbul’s main public streets—was attacked again around 1pm by teargas and water cannons. This time, the police began targeting individuals when they shot teargas canisters. They shot a teargas bomb into the Taksim subway station and closed the doors so that even children and babies in the subway were affected. This was the beginning of the chemical war against the citizens. Media coverage was silent, completely censored. On television you would find a demonstration of how to make risotto. 

The 6th Administration Court of Istanbul suspended the Topçu Barracks Project—known publicly as the planned construction of a shopping mall at Taksim Gezi Park—before 5pm on Friday. We are not still sure what this means. It could mark either the success of our intervention into urban policy or a justification for detaining protesters. Meanwhile, some famous fashion brands and business communities have already announced publicly that they will have no part in any shopping mall built where “blood has been shed.”

Thus the public grew through İstiklâl and nearby districts until by 7pm the numbers reached into the thousands, and had spread to other districts such as the Anatolian side of Istanbul at Kadıköy. Police began again shooting teargas and flew helicopters over İstiklal, Beyoğlu, Tarlabaşı, Harbiye, Şişli. Facebook/Twitter and personal video recordings become the most important means of disseminating information. 

The teargas formed a fog over Istanbul. From 7pm, the police began shooting plastic bullets. Around 10, we were told that more buses of police were arriving to block both parts of İstiklâl and the police were standing by for permission to use real bullets. 

The hotels, hospitals, cafes, high schools, and other public spaces announced that they were accepting the injured. Shopkeepers offered lemon and medicine. All public squares were full until the morning. A public bus driver used his bus as a barricade against the police to protect the people who were attacked. 

From the Guardian: “…amateur video footage showed Turkish military personnel refusing to help the riot police, as well as handing out gas masks to demonstrators. There were also reports that some of the police had switched sides and joined the protests.”

On Saturday morning people began to walk from the Anatolian side of the city by crossing the Bosporus Bridge. Other cities in Turkey rose up in full support of protecting a small green park against an authoritarian government for the right to “breathe” in the city. Cars and buses honked their horns in support. 

The Hilton Hotel managers and staff were proud to host the injured, while its neighbor, the İTÜ Architecture Faculty Taşkışla, closed its doors to its own students. These students were the most active in the occupation of the park by affirming the emancipatory, oppositional role of architects and urban planners in a neoliberal city.

Around 2am people who couldn’t leave home because of children began a protest clashing kitchen tools such as pots and pans from their windows. The sound rose into the sky over the city and become the sound of urban Istanbul’s revival.

www.occupygezi.com

www.direngeziparki.com