“London-based artist Emma McNally charts the astronomical, the anatomical, the topographical, and the topological.
— I think of these drawings as fugitive, heterogeneous grey areas. They are the turbulence between noise and signal. They are a space of difference and deferral, a weather system of graphite. They are also broadband realms where signals at multiple frequencies are being transmitted and received— including those not usually within our “range”: sonar, ultraviolet, the very fast and the very slow. I’m constantly trying to disrupt the figure-ground relationship to make blurred areas where the conditions of focusing are undone.”
[x]
— I think of these drawings as fugitive, heterogeneous grey areas. They are the turbulence between noise and signal. They are a space of difference and deferral, a weather system of graphite. They are also broadband realms where signals at multiple frequencies are being transmitted and received— including those not usually within our “range”: sonar, ultraviolet, the very fast and the very slow. I’m constantly trying to disrupt the figure-ground relationship to make blurred areas where the conditions of focusing are undone.”
[x]
❤7
Slowly things empty, like those big bones
one finds on the beach in summer - horse bones
or bones of prehistoric animals; they are empty of the stuff inside, the marrow;
all that remains is a solid white, a lack of colour, with invisible holes,
like the colour rooms take in winter when
it rains violently. You hold the doorknob, or the handle
of a tea cup and you can't tell whether you hold them or they hold you
or whether they, or you, can be held. And suddenly as you are about to drink your tea,
you see between your fingers the porcelain handle
by itself; - the cup is missing - you examine it: so white, so weightless, almost bone - you think it beautiful, shaped like a half zero - it longs to be complete, while, across, in the wall, out of a deep crack, seeps the warm steam from the tea you did not drink.
Yannis Ritsos, Departures, III, from Yannis Ritsos Selected Poems, trans. Nikos Stangos
one finds on the beach in summer - horse bones
or bones of prehistoric animals; they are empty of the stuff inside, the marrow;
all that remains is a solid white, a lack of colour, with invisible holes,
like the colour rooms take in winter when
it rains violently. You hold the doorknob, or the handle
of a tea cup and you can't tell whether you hold them or they hold you
or whether they, or you, can be held. And suddenly as you are about to drink your tea,
you see between your fingers the porcelain handle
by itself; - the cup is missing - you examine it: so white, so weightless, almost bone - you think it beautiful, shaped like a half zero - it longs to be complete, while, across, in the wall, out of a deep crack, seeps the warm steam from the tea you did not drink.
Yannis Ritsos, Departures, III, from Yannis Ritsos Selected Poems, trans. Nikos Stangos
❤4
“Until recently, history, all the accounts people gave of their lives, all proverbs, fables, parables, confronted the same thing: the everlasting, fearsome, and occasionally beautiful, struggle of living with Necessity, which is the enigma of existence – that which followed from the Creation, and which subsequently has always continued to sharpen the human spirit.”
— John Berger, Steps Toward A Small Theory of the Visible
— John Berger, Steps Toward A Small Theory of the Visible
❤4
“Today images abound everywhere. Never has so much been depicted and watched. We have glimpses at any moment of what things look like on the other side of the planet, or the other side of the moon. Appearances registered, and transmitted with lightning speed. Yet with this something has innocently changed. They used to be called physical appearances because they belonged to solid bodies. Now appearances are volatile. Technological innovation has made it easy to separate the apparent from the existant. And this is precisely what the present system’s mythology continually needs to exploit. It turns appearances into refractions, like mirages: refractions not of light but of appetite, in fact a single appetite, the appetite for more. Consequently — and oddly, considering the physical implications of the notion of appetite — the existant, the body, disappears. We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks.”
— John Berger, Steps Toward A Small Theory of the Visible
— John Berger, Steps Toward A Small Theory of the Visible
❤4
Beautiful
morning with no need of myths, sipping honey without blasphemy.
Beautiful
morning, this or some other morning,
this life or some other invention,
without any ghosts in the shadows.
The sand's dampness clings to my feet.
I swallow the sea, which swallows me.
Seashells, curved thoughts, shades of complete
blue
light
over materialized forms.
Beautiful
passing body, blended into the whole
body of the world.
An urge to sing, but so intense
I hold my tongue, replete.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Sponge Song, from Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Multitudinous Heart: Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Richard Zenith
morning with no need of myths, sipping honey without blasphemy.
Beautiful
morning, this or some other morning,
this life or some other invention,
without any ghosts in the shadows.
The sand's dampness clings to my feet.
I swallow the sea, which swallows me.
Seashells, curved thoughts, shades of complete
blue
light
over materialized forms.
Beautiful
passing body, blended into the whole
body of the world.
An urge to sing, but so intense
I hold my tongue, replete.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Sponge Song, from Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Multitudinous Heart: Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Richard Zenith
❤3
“But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits. After twenty years, in spite of all the other anonymous stairways; we would recapture the reflexes of the "first stairway," we would not stumble on that rather high step. The house's entire being would open up, faithful to our own being. We would push the door that creaks with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch has remained in our hands.”
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
❤3
The successive houses in which we have lived have no doubt made our gestures commonplace. But we are very surprised, when we return to the old house, after an odyssey of many years, to find that the most delicate gestures, the earliest gestures suddenly come alive, are still faultless. In short, the house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting. We are the diagram of the functions of inhabiting that particular house, and all the other houses are but variations on a fundamental theme. The word habit is too worn a word to express this passionate liaison of our bodies, which do
not forget, with an unforgettable house.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
not forget, with an unforgettable house.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
❤1👍1
And shall we have to deny thee then,
God of the tumors, God of the living
flower, begin with a no to the obscure
rock "I am," consent to death
and on each tomb inscribe our only
certainty: "thanatos athanatos"?
Without a name to tell the dreams the tears the furors of this man defeated by still-open questions.
Our dialogue alters; now the absurd
becomes possible. There, beyond
the smoke of fog, within the trees
the potency of leaves awakes, true is the river pressing on the banks.
Life is not dream. True is man
and his jealous plaint of silence.
God of silence, open solitude.
Salvatore Quasimodo, Thanatos Athanatos, from The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo, trans. Allen Mandelbaum
God of the tumors, God of the living
flower, begin with a no to the obscure
rock "I am," consent to death
and on each tomb inscribe our only
certainty: "thanatos athanatos"?
Without a name to tell the dreams the tears the furors of this man defeated by still-open questions.
Our dialogue alters; now the absurd
becomes possible. There, beyond
the smoke of fog, within the trees
the potency of leaves awakes, true is the river pressing on the banks.
Life is not dream. True is man
and his jealous plaint of silence.
God of silence, open solitude.
Salvatore Quasimodo, Thanatos Athanatos, from The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo, trans. Allen Mandelbaum
❤6
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
“Come Out” from Fase: Four movements to the Music of Steve Reich
1982
Ph: Herman Sorgeloos
“Come Out” from Fase: Four movements to the Music of Steve Reich
1982
Ph: Herman Sorgeloos
❤6🤯2