Followers

7.05.2009

Symmetries

the
gap between
matter and reality
utterance and meaning
pointing and that pointed at
parallelisms




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^^

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at 12:36 PM , Links to this post
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7.02.2009

Myths to Live By

The recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology. And along with this there runs another realization; namely, that the social group into which the individual has been born, which nourishes and protects him and which, for the greater part of his life, he must himself help to nourish and protect, was flourishing long before his own birth and will remain when he is gone.

That is to say, not only does the individual member of our species, conscious of himself as such, face death, but he confronts also the necessity to adapt himself to whatever order of life may happen to be that of the community into which he has been born, this being an order of life superordinate to his own, a superorganism into which he must allow himself to be absorbed, and through participation in which he will come to know the life that transcends death.

In every one of the mythological systems that in the long course of history and prehistory have been propagated in the various zones and quarter of this earth, these two fundamental realizations - of the inevitability of death and the endurance of the social order - have been combined symbolically and constitute the nuclear structuring force of the rites and, thereby, the society.

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at 11:29 PM , Links to this post
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6.27.2009

Memento Mori

As is amply evident from the last post, the Recession of 2009 kindled a certain ire in me (I'm not alone in this, the vitrol is widely available - even now, after the worst of the anti financial sector fever has begun to pass).

The reflections on the causes and origins of the Recession eventually led me to believe that something fundamental was lacking in the awareness of the people who's actions literally (albeit legally) sacked the globes financial piggy bank.

What follows here is a throw back, another anachronism, memento mori.
Literally "remember that you die" or "remember to die". This simple admonition is not intended to be some sort of heavy yoke to don for the duration of your life - but simply a reminder. Be reminded that we do and will pass - that life is a gift, a boon, a privilege. Living needs to be about quality, about joy, about virtue and about the good. Living should not come at the expense of another's well being.

This is rather early on to be posting these images - I've barely begun this work, and don't exactly know if the aesthetic is already "set" . . . what matters above all else to me is the idea, the message, the content. The means of production - the way the images look - is a byproduct of what I know, what tools I have, and where my experience lies. Nothing impedes me from trying something I don't know, adopting new tools, and gaining new experiences - if this becomes what the work calls for. For right now... this is what I'm putting together.

I must say - I am slowly getting to be more at ease with the inner pictorialist in me... not that I don't continue to enjoy more contemporary modes of working (like the production process in Tulipomania).... but there is at least a good deal of my aesthetic appetite that is satiated with these tones, these gestures, this atmospheric gestalt.

Maybe ... now writing the above, maybe I will consider that it be problematic that the images are so easily digestible with one glance.... I usually like work that unfold.s, that the mind unravels slowly, by intuition and appreciation .. . I'll let that marinade for a while. I have another shoot in a few days.



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at 11:31 PM , Links to this post
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