According to another, more luminous tradition, the secret name is not so much the cipher of the thing’s subservience to the magus’s speech as, rather, the monogram that sanctions its liberation from language. The secret name was the name by which the creature was called in Eden. When it is pronounced, every manifest name – the entire Babel of names – is shattered.
That is why, according to this doctrine, magic is a call to happiness. The secret name is the gesture that restores the creature to the unexpressed. In the final instance, magic is not a knowledge of names but a gesture, a breaking free from the name. That is why a child is never more content than when he invents a secret language. His sadness comes less from ignorance of magic names than from his own inability to free himself from the name that has been imposed on him. No sooner does he succeed, no sooner does he invent a new name, than he holds in his hands the laissez-passer that grants him happiness.
To have a name is to be guilty. And justice, like magic, is nameless. Happy, and without a name, the creature knocks at the gates of the land of the magi, who speak in gestures alone.
- Giorgio Agamben, Magic and Happiness (Profanations, 2005)
That is why, according to this doctrine, magic is a call to happiness. The secret name is the gesture that restores the creature to the unexpressed. In the final instance, magic is not a knowledge of names but a gesture, a breaking free from the name. That is why a child is never more content than when he invents a secret language. His sadness comes less from ignorance of magic names than from his own inability to free himself from the name that has been imposed on him. No sooner does he succeed, no sooner does he invent a new name, than he holds in his hands the laissez-passer that grants him happiness.
To have a name is to be guilty. And justice, like magic, is nameless. Happy, and without a name, the creature knocks at the gates of the land of the magi, who speak in gestures alone.
- Giorgio Agamben, Magic and Happiness (Profanations, 2005)
Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko has developed a project researching the boundaries of historical memories in Russian Orthodox churches. “Monuments” involved the sensitive appropriation of the abandoned rural churches, erecting lightweight structures in abstract modernist shapes
6 Romances, Op. 6: None But The Lonely Heart, Op. 6 No. 6
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky
None but the lonely heart
knows what I suffer!
Alone and parted
from all joy,
I see the firmament
in that direction.
Alas, who loves and knows me
is far away.
I'm dizzy, it burns
my entrails.
None but the lonely heart
knows what I suffer.
knows what I suffer!
Alone and parted
from all joy,
I see the firmament
in that direction.
Alas, who loves and knows me
is far away.
I'm dizzy, it burns
my entrails.
None but the lonely heart
knows what I suffer.
Casas Aguirre’, two single family houses attached.
Jori-Mont, Val d'Aran, Lleida, Spain; 1974
Jori-Mont, Val d'Aran, Lleida, Spain; 1974
“Such a duality as cause and effect probably doesn’t exist. In truth, we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us.”
—The Gay Science, §112 (edited excerpt).
—The Gay Science, §112 (edited excerpt).