An X Education

(via https://soundcloud.com/bruno-freitas-de-oliveira/interview-rp?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

Interview Renzo Piano 

Interview courtesy of Ton Ton Filmes.

Drawings:

“Dear Mr. Walter *

Thank you for your letter. Now I am healthy in my mind, because Dr. Bhagat is treating me very well. Every 8 days I go and speak for one hour with Anjali, the therapist. So now we can start working on the book. I will tell you my life story in many letters. 

Today, I am alone. Today, there is no one to explain or help me understand. No one comes to meet me nor do I go to meet anyone. Now I understand why becoming old is hard in India, because nobody helps the old people. If I had a family, if I had children, they would care for me.

I am very angry with Allah that in this life he had me born as eunuch. Eunuchs can only be happy in a group with other eunuchs, but I cannot live with them nor can I live alone. If God himself made the third-sex, then he should have insured that we are respected in society. Instead we get disrespect and insults. 

In India eunuchs go to weddings and births and dance for blessings and get money in return. Many people like this custom, but many do not. That is why I do not like to be in the eunuch world. I want people to respect me as a human being. Is it not my right? 

Do you have eunuchs in America and in Switzerland? Are they respected or not? What jobs do they do to earn a living?

My daughter Ayesha has been with Chaman guru for two years now and has gone to Pakistan with the eunuchs. But nobody informed me. Chaman guru does not return Ayesha to me, because she feels Ayesha will not have a good future with me. I have to obey Chaman, because he is my guru, but the bad thing is that he does not let me meet Ayesha. 

Ever since childhood I could not understand why I was born this form. It is like a curse to be a eunuch. If I was a normal man, or even a woman, I would have a family today, even though I know that people are not happy in marriages these days. They fight and argue and hurt each other. But still, a family is very important. I know many husbands  keep mistresses these days, but they still have a family to share happiness and sorrow with. This aspect I do not like that as a eunuch I do not have a family. Society does not respect me, and on the road everyone stares at me. Because as a eunuch I cannot go to anyone’s wedding or death as a normal person. You only stay with eunuchs.

Eunuchs come from all over and make their groups, and often someone’s nature does not suit another’s. You can live in the same group for 40 years, but finally it amounts to nothing. Because we are not related by blood. So they are always fighting and dying among each other. This I could not tolerate in my old age, and so I separated from them. But now I am neither here nor there, not part of the eunuch world, not part of normal society. So I stay in the graveyard. You tell me where I can go now. I left my blood family when I was 17. I left my eunuch family when I was 60, and now I wait for Dayanita’s visits or phone calls. When everyone deserted me and no one spoke to me nicely, Dayanita supported me. When I was in depression, she gave me the reason and strength to live. 

I was sitting with Ayesha in my lap, i think it was 1989, and Dayanita came to my house to photograph me. We do not like  outsiders coming to see us, but I made her to sit in my house, and she photographed me. But I told her not to use the photographs, so she returned the film to me, because I have many relatives I did not want to see the photographs. Every time we give and interview, the journalists write whatever they want anyway. It was destined that we should become friends. i am sure she never even dreamt that a eunuch could become her best friend, and I am sure people ask her what she sees in me, but she has never bothered about what people say. From childhood I never received such true love from anyone but her. But if that day she had not listened to me and still used the photograph , we could never have become friends. She was very young and looking smart, but very innocent. Her behaviour is what endeared her to me. She sat right next to me and talked to me like she would have talked to a normal person. All afternoon we talked about our lives. Now it feels she is my own blood. 

In the graveyard a blind maulvi (muslim priest) came and stayed and ate for a few days in my house and left. Then another poor man came to stay. When the blind man asking him were he was staying, and the poor man told him, he said: ‘Oh, so you stay with Ahmed the hijra (eunuch)?’ He enjoyed my hospitality for so many days, and finally I was just Ahmed the hijra to him. It is not his fault, though. Our society is like that. They cannot see beyond our being a eunuch. They forgot we have a heart, a mind, a point of view.

I am grateful that you called me a human being and not just a eunuch.

With love 

Myself Mona Ahmed”

“Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer; Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow, Farewell to the straths and green vallies below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods” 

Robert Burns

https://open.spotify.com/track/1RmoqoaL6BIje1nXY79PhL

MOUTH: “ out . . . into this world . . . this world . . . tiny little thing . . . before its time . . . in a godfor – . . . what? . . girl? . . yes . . . tiny little girl . . . into this . . . out into this . . . before her time . . . godforsaken hole called . . . called . . . no matter . . . parents unknown . . . unheard of . . . he having vanished . . . thin air . . . no sooner buttoned up his breeches . . . she similarly . . . eight months later . . . almost to the tick . . . so no love . . . spared that . . . no love such as normally vented on the . . . speechless infant . . . in the home . . . no . . . nor indeed for that matter any of any kind . . . no love of any kind . . . at any subsequent stage . . . so typical affair . . . nothing of any note till coming up to sixty when– . . . what? . . seventy?. . good God! . . coming up to seventy . . . wandering in a field . . . looking aimlessly for cowslips . . . to make a ball . . . a few steps then stop . . . stare into space . . . then on . . . a few more . . . stop and stare again . . . so on . . . drifting around . . . when suddenly . . . gradually . . . all went out . . . all that early April morning light . . . and she found herself in the - . . . what? . . who? . . no! . . she!”

[Pause and movement 1.]  “found herself in the dark . . . and if not exactly . . . insentient . . . insentient . . . for she could still hear the buzzing . . . so-called . . . in the ears . . . and a ray of light came and went . . . came and went . . . such as the moon might cast . . . drifting . . . in and out of cloud . . . but so dulled . . . feeling . . . feeling so dulled . . . she did not know . . . what position she was in . . . imagine! . . what position she was in! . . whether standing . . . or sitting . . . but the brain– . . . what?. . kneeling? . . yes . . . whether standing . . . or sitting . . . or kneeling . . . but the brain– . . . what? . . lying? . . yes . . whether standing . . . or sitting . . . or kneeling . . . or lying . . . but the brain still . . . still . . . in a way . . . for her first thought was . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . brought up as she had been to believe . . . with the other waifs . . . in a merciful . . . [Brief laugh.] . . . God . . . [Good laugh.] . . . first thought was . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . she was being punished . . . for her sins . . . a number of which then . . . further proof if proof were needed . . . flashed through her mind . . . one after another . . . then dismissed as foolish . . . oh long after . . . this thought dismissed . . . as she suddenly realised . . . gradually realised . . . she was not suffering . . . imagine! . . not suffering! . . indeed could not remember . . . off-hand . . . when she had suffered less . . . unless of course she was . . . meant to be suffering . . . ha! . . thought to be suffering . . . just as the odd time . . . in her life . . . when clearly intended to be having pleasure . . . she was in fact . . . having none . . . not the slightest . . . in which case of course . . . that notion of punishment . . . for some sin or other . . . or for the lot . . . or no particular reason . . . for its own sake . . . thing she understood perfectly . . . that notion of punishment . . . which had first occurred to her . . . brought up as she had been to believe . . . with the other waifs . . . in a merciful . . . [Brief laugh.] . . . God . . . [Good laugh.] . . . first occurred to her . . . then dismissed . . . as foolish . . . was perhaps not so foolish . . . after all . . . so on . . . all that . . . vain reasonings . . . till another thought . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . . . very foolish really but – . . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all the time buzzing . . . so-called . . . in the ears . . . though of course actually . . . not in the ears at all . . . in the skull . . . dull roar in the skull . . . and all the time this ray or beam . . . like moonbeam . . . but probably not . . . certainly not . . . always the same spot . . . now bright . . . now shrouded . . . but always the same spot . . . as no moon could . . . no . . . no moon . . . just all part of the same wish to . . . torment . . . though actually in point of fact . . . not in the least . . . not a twinge . . . so far . . . ha! . . so far . . . this other thought then . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . very foolish really but so like her . . . in a way . . . that she might do well to . . . groan . . . on and off . . . writhe she could not . . . as if in actual agony . . . but could not . . . could not bring herself . . . some flaw in her make-up . . . incapable of deceit . . . or the machine . . . more likely the machine . . . so disconnected . . . never got the message . . . or powerless to respond . . . like numbed . . . couldn't make the sound . . . not any sound . . . no sound of any kind . . . no screaming for help for example . . . should she feel so inclined . . . scream . . . [Screams.] . . . then listen . . . [Silence.] . . . scream again . . . [Screams again.] . . . then listen again . . . [Silence.] . . . no . . . spared that . . . all silent as the grave . . . no part –. . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all silent but for the buzzing . . . so-called . . . no part of her moving . . . that she could feel . . . just the eyelids . . . presumably . . . on and off . . . shut out the light . . . reflex they call it . . . no feeling of any kind . . . but the lids . . . even best of times . . . who feels them? . . opening . . . shutting . . . all that moisture . . .but the brain still . . . still sufficiently . . . oh very much so! . . at this stage . . . in control . . . under control . . . to question even this . . . for on that April morning . . . so it reasoned . . . that April morning . . . she fixing with her eye . . . a distant bell . . . as she hastened towards it . . . fixing it with her eye . . . lest it elude her . . . had not all gone out . . . all that light . . . of itself . . . without any . . . any. . . on her part . . . so on . . . so on it reasoned . . . vain questionings . . . and all dead still . . . sweet silent as the grave . . . when suddenly . . . gradually . . . she realis  –. . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all dead still but for the buzzing . . . when suddenly she realised . . . words were – . . . what? . . who?. . no! . . she!”

[Pause and movement 2.] “ realised . . . words were coming . . . imagine! . . . words were coming . . . a voice she did not recognise at first so long since it had sounded . . . then finally had to admit . . . could be none other . . . than her own . . . certain vowel sounds . . . she had never heard . . . elsewhere . . . so that people would stare . . . the rare occasions . . . once or twice a year . . . always winter some strange reason . . . stare at her uncom-prehending . . . and now this stream . . . steady stream . . . she who had never . . . on the contrary . . . practically speechless . . . all her days . . . how she survived! . . even shopping . . . out shopping . . . busy shopping centre . . . supermart . . . just hand in the list . . . with the bag . . . old black shopping bag . . . then stand there waiting . . . any length of time . . . middle of the throng . . . motionless . . . staring into space . . . mouth half open as usual . . . till it was back in her hand . . . the bag back in her hand . . . then pay and go . . . not as much as good-bye . . . how she survived! . . and now this stream . . . not catching the half of it . . . not the quarter . . . no idea . . . what she was saying . . . imagine! . . no idea what she was saying! . . till she began trying to . . . delude herself . . . it was not hers at all . . . not her voice at all . . . and no doubt would have . . . vital she should . . . was on the point . . . after long efforts . . . when suddenly she felt . . . gradually she felt . . . her lips moving . . . imagine! . . her lips moving! . . as of course till then she had not . . . and not alone the lips . . . the cheeks . . . the jaws . . . the whole face . . . all those – . . what?. . the tongue? . . yes . . . the tongue in the mouth . . . all those contortions without which . . . no speech possible . . . and yet in the ordinary way . . . not felt at all . . . so intent one is . . . on what one is saying . . . the whole being . . . hanging on its words . . . so that not only she had . . . had she . . . not only had she . . . to give up . . . admit hers alone . . . her voice alone . . . but this other awful thought . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . even more awful if possible . . . that feeling was coming back . . . imagine! . . feeling coming back! . . starting at the top . . . then working down . . . the whole machine . . . but no . . . spared that . . . the mouth alone . . . so far . . . ha! . . so far . . . then thinking . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . it can't go on . . . all this . . . all that . . . steady stream . . . straining to hear . . . make some-thing of it . . . and her own thoughts . . . make something of them . . . all – . . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all the time the buzzing . . . so-called . . . all that together . . . imagine! . . whole body like gone . . . just the mouth . . . lips . . . cheeks . . . jaws . . . never – . . . what?. . tongue? . . yes . . . lips. . . cheeks . . . jaws . . . tongue . . . never still a second . . . mouth on fire . . . stream of words . . . in her ear . . . practically in her ear . . . not catching the half . . . not the quarter . . . no idea what she's saying . . . imagine! . . no idea what she's saying! . . and can't stop . . . no stopping it . . . she who but a moment before . . . but a moment! . . could not make a sound . . . no sound of any kind . . . now can't stop . . . imagine! . . can't stop the stream . . . and the whole brain begging . . . something begging in the brain . . . begging the mouth to stop . . . pause a moment . . . if only for a moment . . . and no response . . . as if it hadn’t heard . . . or couldn’t . . . couldn't pause a second . . . like maddened . . . all that together . . . straining to hear . . . piece it together . . . and the brain . . . raving away on its own . . . trying to make sense of it . . . or make it stop . . . or in the past . . . dragging up the past . . . flashes from all over . . . walks mostly . . . walking all her days . . . day after day . . . a few steps then stop . . . stare into space . . . then on . . . a few more . . . stop and stare again . . . so on . . . drifting around . . . day after day . . . or that time she cried . . . the one time she could remember . . . since she was a baby . . . must have cried as a baby . . . perhaps not . . . not essential to life . . . just the birth cry to get her going . . . breathing . . . then no more till this . . . old hag already . . . sitting staring at her hand . . . where was it? . . Croker's Acres . . . one evening on the way home . . . home! . . a little mound in Croker's Acres . . . dusk . . . sitting staring at her hand . . . there in her lap . . . palm upward . . . suddenly saw it wet . . . the palm . . . tears presumably . . . hers presumably . . . no one else for miles . . . no sound . . . just the tears . . . sat and watched them dry . . . all over in a second . . . or grabbing at straw . . . the brain . . . flickering away on its own . . . quick grab and on. . . nothing there . . . on to the next . . . bad as the voice . . . worse . . . as little sense . . . all that together . . . can't – . . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all the time the buzzing . . . dull roar like falls . . . and the beam . . . flickering on and off . . . starting to move around . . . like moonbeam but not . . . all part of the same . . . keep an eye on that too . . . corner of the eye . . . all that together . . . can't go on . . . God is love . . . she'll be purged . . . back in the field . . . morning sun . . . April . . . sink face down in the grass . . . nothing but the larks . . . so on . . . grabbing at the straw . . . straining to hear . . . the odd word . . . make some sense of it . . . whole body like gone . . . just the mouth . . . like maddened . . . and can't stop . . . no stopping it . . . something she – . . . something she had to – . . . what? . . who? . . no! . . she!” 

[Pause and movement 3.] ” something she had to–. . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all the time the buzzing . . . dull roar . . . in the skull . . . and the beam . . . ferreting around . . . painless . . . so far . . . ha! . . so far . . . then thinking . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . perhaps something she had to . . . had to . . . tell . . . could that be it? . . something she had to . . . tell . . . tiny little thing . . . before its time . . . godforsaken hole . . . no love . . . spared that . . . speechless all her days . . . practically speechless . . . how she survived! . . that time in court . . . what had she to say for herself . . . guilty or not guilty . . . stand up woman . . . speak up woman . . . stood there staring into space . . . mouth half open as usual . . . waiting to be led away . . . glad of the hand on her arm . . . now this . . . some-thing she had to tell . . . could that be it? . . something that would tell . . . how it was . . . how she – . . . what? . . had been? . . yes . . . something that would tell how it had been . . . how she had lived . . . lived on and on . . . guilty or not . . . on and on . . . to be sixty . . . something she – . . . what? . . seventy? . . good God! . . on and on to be seventy . . . something she didn't know herself . . . wouldn't know if she heard . . . then forgiven . . . God is love . . . tender mercies . . . new every morning . . . back in the field . . . April morning . . . face in the grass . . . nothing but the larks . . . pick it up there . . . get on with it from there . . . another few– . . . what? . . not that? . . nothing to do with that? . . nothing she could tell? . . all right . . . nothing she could tell . . . try something else . . . think of something else . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash . . . not that either . . . all right . . . something else again . . . so on . . . hit on it in the end . . . think everything keep on long enough . . . then forgiven . . . back in the – . . . what? . . not that either? . . nothing to do with that either? . . nothing she could think? . . all right . . . nothing she could tell . . . nothing she could think . . . nothing she– . . what? . . who? . . no! . . she!” 

Dom Pedro II of Brazil, 1833 by Joaquim Insley Pacheco

Tacita Dean 

The Russian Ending is a series of twenty photogravures printed by Niels Borch Jensen and published by Peter Blum Editions. The title is drawn from a peculiar story of the early Danish film industry where two versions for each film were produced, a happy ending for American audiences and a tragic ending for the Russian market.

The images on the photo-etchings are from old postcards bought in flea markets, that depict accidents and disasters, and that have been superimposed with hand written notes similar to the ones employed in the cinema industry for directions, lighting instructions, sound and camera movements.

Found objects are recurrent in her work, in Die Regimentstochter (The Daughter of the Regiment, 2005), titled after Donizetti ‘s comic opera; Dean framed thirty-six opera programmes from the thirties that were bought on a Berlin flea market. The programmes had been disingenuously sliced, presumably to cut out the Swastikas that once adorned and embossed the covers. A glimpse of text, drawings or photographs are revealed through the small window cut.

In Girl Stowaway (1994), the story departs from a photograph found in a book, a photograph of Miss Jean Jeinnie, a sixteen-year-old Australian girl that stowaway aboard Hergozin Cecilie while on a holiday at the seaside. Dressed as a boy Jeinnie hid in the ship’s hold for 72 hours and travelled from Australia to England, latter writing her adventures in The Log of The Happy Girl.

 “… Her voyage was from Port Lincoln to Falmouth. It had a beginning and an end, and exists as recorded passage of time. My own journey follows no such linear narrative. It started at the moment I found the photograph but has meandered ever since, through unchartered research and no obvious destination. It has become a passage into history along the line that divides fact from fiction, and is more like a journey through an underworld of chance intervention and an epic encounter than any place I recognise. My story is about coincidence, and about what is invited and what is not “ – Tacita Dean

The serendipitous and the circumstantial are Dean’s modus operandi; the artist often describes it as Objective Chance defined by André Breton as “each time present the appearance of a signal, without being possible to say exactly which signal”. The signals are coincidences and trouvailles, events that the mind connects due to a certain formal resemblance (the individual adds meaning) or as events that are connected beyond thought (the meaning is part of the event).

For Tacita Dean the “meandering journey is completely hermetic and esoteric. I have to translate it somehow, but I know the journey, it’s quite autobiographical.”

 The Wrecking of the Ngahere, 2001 -  photo-etching on paper.

The Sinking of the SS Plympton, 2001 - photo-etching on paper.

Ship of Death, 2001 - photo-etching on paper.

So They Sank Her! 2001 - photo-etching on paper.

Die Explosion in dem Kanal, 2001 - photo-etching on paper.

The Tragedy of Hughesovka Bridge,  2001 - photo-etching on paper.

Vesuvio,  2001 - photo-etching on paper.

Beautiful Sheffield ,  2001 - photo-etching on paper.

Untitled (Monument) - Juan Muñoz, February - April 1992, London.

Untitled (Monument) was commissioned by Artangel in association with the South Bank Centre as part of the exhibition Doubletake: Collective Memory and Current Art at the Hayward Gallery held from the 20th of February till 19 April of 1992.

“A Monument

Every year, on the second Sunday in November, a sombre wreath-laying ceremony takes place at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall. At eleven in the morning, as the strikes of Big Ben die away, a symbolic, two minute silence commences. This unbroken silence is broadcast live, on TV and radio, throughout Britain and the Commonwealth. It is the longest on-air silence the BBC transmits, a silence which falls in Bombay and Vancouver, in Wellington and Harare, simultaneously. A global, local stillness. There is, of course, some ambient sound - the distant hum of traffic, a cough from somewhere in the crowd, the shrieks of gulls on the river - all carried on the wind and picked up by the microphones. Originally commemorating the formal end of fighting in the First World War (on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918) it now encompasses the remembrance of the dead from subsequent wars. The cameras can’t bear the stillness, and slowly pan and dissolve across the ceremony, always returning to Lutyens’s monument. The Cenotaph, completed in 1920, is a stepped and canted obelisk with minimal ornamentation, whose largest angled planes, if projected vertically, would meet at a single point exactly one mile above the base. Munoz says of the Cenotaph ‘It is one of the most outstanding pieces of modern geometry l can think of. It hasn’t been damaged by the passage of time.’ On the opposite side of the Thames, between the South Bank arts complex and County Hall, he plans to build a sculpture (3), 4.5 metres high, of granite slabs, with three bronze flagpoles and three bronze flags (the Lutyens has real flags, sheeted-in to prevent any unseemly flapping). His sketches show a loosely rendered, unadorned version of the Cenotaph, and three flags shrouding their poles. In the drawings the flags look a little like Giacometti figures standing in a row against their stone backdrop. According to Munoz’s notes the sculpture will be ‘disguised as a monument; a monument to nothing. How great it would be, he said, if someone mistook this sculpture for a memorial of some kind, and placed a wreath beneath it”

In Residence: Ricardo Bofill - The Spanish architect’s house built out of a disused cement factory.

"… The house is a ruin that has been restructured and remade, where the spaces are useful for everything. The advantage of this labyrinth is that people don’t find each other, and everyone lives as they want to. This is a place where the traditional house is not conceived. This space was transforming into a green space that didn’t let off smoke, where instead of seeing a smoking chimney you would see a cylinder, a sculpture. All this was done with a very minimalistic approach, a simple approach with simple materials…

It crosses contradictory aesthetics trends: a brutalist vision with a romantic vision of useless structures that have been left for pure aesthetic composition…”

http://codepen.io/piksl/pen/EaxJxX.html

Based on Jared Tarbell's Substrate algorithm concept. 

"Technology, he concluded, is 'adaptive cumulative and generally progressive. At its simplest is older than reason. As it most advanced, it is the product of cooperative undertakings by large numbers of highly intelligent organisms"

Multimodal Logics vs Dichotomies 

"One is reminded here of the anthropologist and physician team of Doris Jonas and David Jonas, who suggest in 'Other Senses, Other Worlds' that alien intelligence dependent on sensory modalities unlike those of humans may have radically different ways of experiencing and conceptualising their worlds. Similar ideas have been a staple of science fiction as well. Naomi Mitchison's 'Memoirs of a Spacewoman', for example, suggests that radially symmetrical intelligence, in this case brainy starfish- might possess a multimodal logic to match their morphologies. While bilaterally symmetrical species, such as humans, are more prone to view the world in terms of simple dichotomies"

Vakoch, Edited by D. A., 2014. Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication. 1st ed. Washington: NASA.

An anatomical illustration from Sobotta's Human Anatomy 1908 by Dr. Johannes Sobotta. 

Herengracht in Amsterdam

Stereoscope by Andries Jager, 1859. 

Lebbeus Woods

"Architecture and war are not incompatible.

Architecture is war. War is architecture.

I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority

that resides in fixed and frightened forms.

I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family,  

no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no know beginning or end,

no sacred primordial site.

I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories

that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears.

I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments,

and forms that appear with infinite strength, then melt into air.

I am an architect, a constructor of worlds,

a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody,

a silhouette against the darkening sky.

I cannot know your name. Nor can you know mine.

Tomorrow, we begin together  the construction of a city."

Woods, L, 1993. War and Architecture. 1st ed. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

  San Francisco Project,  Inhabiting the Quake, Quake City, 1995; graphite and pastel on paper; 14.5 inches by 23 inches. Collection SFMOMA

Das Triadisches Ballet by Oskar Schlemmer, 1922.

Das Triadisches Ballet was choreographed and developed by Oskar Schlemmer, a German artist and teacher at the Bauhaus School. The ballet premiered in Stuttgart on 30th of September 1922 with a musical score by Paul Hindemith.

After finishing his studies in graphic design and enrolling for a semester in the Stuttgart Academy of Art, Schlemmer worked as painter in Berlin and returned to Stuttgart (1913) to be Adolf Höezel’s student. Schlemmer directed the New Art Salon and together with Willi Baumeister and Hermann Stenner designed a mural for the main hall of the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Serving in the army throughout WWI he was wounded twice and as a result appointed to a cartography unit in Colmar where he remained until the end of the war.

After the armistice (1918) Schlemmer returned to Stuttgart and to Höezel’s tutelage, producing Das Triadisches Ballet’s figurines two years later. In January of 1921 Schlemmer was appointed by Walter Gropius Master of Form, initially heading the Wall Painting Department, the Stone Sculpture Workshop and teaching life drawing. From 1923 to 1929 Schlemmer was the head for the Stage Workshop in Weimar and Dessau, and created a figure drawing course named Der Mensch (The Human Being).

From 1929 to 1932 Schlemmer held a professorship at the Breslau School of Art in Poland and designed stage sets for an opera and ballet by Igor Stravinsky.

In 1932, he was appointed professor at United State Schools of Fine & Applied Arts in Berlin and a year later had his retrospective exhibition closed by the SA, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, dismissed from work without notice he then moved to Switzerland. Goebbel’s Reich Culture Chamber was a professional organisation for German artists with mandatory membership, to be accepted one had to present an Aryan certificate, and despite registering, Schlemmer was included in the infamous National Socialist exhibition of Degenerate Art and had sixty five of his works confiscated from museums. He had returned to Germany and was living in a small village in the Black Forest near the Swiss border.

During the last years of his life, Schlemmer remained active, working in a lacquer paint laboratory of a friend’s firm in Wuppertal, which allowed him to work without fear of persecution. He died in 1943 after a brief illness, left letters and diaries that where decades later edited by his wife, Tut Schlemmer, and published by Northwestern University Press as The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer.

The figurines of Das Triadisches Ballet were prototypes that took a central role in the choreography in constant dialogue between pictorial and movement. Geometric forms dress the dancers, in a choreographed geometry of architectural structures that move and are restricted by the shapes that limit the body. Man And Artistic Figure and Man In Space are the two main themes; they reflect not only Schlemmer’s interest in new technologies and experiences as a soldier in WWI, the diving suits or the masks used in the trenches, but also themes that defined the age just as society’s mechanisation, man as machine and the body as mechanism.

The work also represents the duality of humanity’s impulses; reason and logic (Apollonian) and the emotion and instinct (Dionysian), a theme found in most Greek tragedies as well as the work of a few German authors like Nietzsche, Kant or Hölderlin.

Other images are also summoned, the chessboard, the jester, a clock’s dials and the child’s spinning top that tilts when stopping, wonderfully brought to mind by the dancer that spins over the yellow room in pointe work, down to a semi pointe and stopping à terre while tilting her body.

The Comet Song

Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased in this recording.  This sonification of the RPC-Mag data was compiled by German composer Manuel Senfft (www.tagirijus.de). 

RPC, the Rosetta Plasma Consortium, is a set of five instruments sharing a common electrical and data interface with the Rosetta orbiter. The RPC instruments are designed to make complementary measurements of the plasma environment around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

The Little Giant’s children and a terrific old lady

The windows at the rear of the flat face a big courtyard that is essentially a playground for the Des Klein Reus (The Little Giant) primary school.

In London, I used to live near the famous street where the flower market is held every Sunday, Columbia Road, and where a big primary school is located. I remember walking towards it and hearing a joyful uproar of children playing, that would become louder and louder the closer I got to the playground. It never ceased to amaze me how screams can make you smile and feel happy, or perhaps is due to happiness that one smiles or is one happy purely by smiling?

Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas

“I’m the clerk, I’m the scribe, at the hearings of what cause I know not. Why want it to be mine, I don’t want it. There it goes again, that’s the first question this evening. To be judge and party, witness and advocate, and he, attentive, indifferent, who sits and notes. It’s an image, in my helpless head, where all sleeps, all is dead, not yet born, I don’t know, or before my eyes, they see the scene, the lids flicker and it’s in. An instant and then they close again, to look inside the head, to try and see inside, to look for me there, to look for someone there, in the silence of quite a different justice, in the toils of that obscure assize where to be is to be guilty. That is why nothing appears, all is silent, one is frightened to be born, no, one wishes one were, so as to begin to die.”

  Beckett, S. 1958. Texts For Nothing, V. 1st ed. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.

Vanitasstilleven in een nis - Wallerant Vaillaint, 1658-1677

Print, h-176mm by w- 130mm. Rijksmuseum / RP-P-H-1086