AG2023_1034175a or le désir du néant

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“Chercher à s’anéantir dans son œuvre n’est pas toujours un signe d’humilité. Même le désir du néant peut être une vanité…”

“Je le laissai et allai provoquer la nuit parisienne, son incandescence, ses flots de bière, sa joie pure, ses rires purs, sa drogue dure, ses illusions d’habiter l’éternité ou l’instant.”

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

AG2023_1078357a or lies within something of another nature

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Untitled (Field Guide; “what’s not found at once, but lies within something of another nature”) ii, 2023. Graphite, colored pencil, gesso, enamel paint, gouache, collage, pigment print on paper. 75 x 54 cm

Denise Levertov, “Pleasures”. (I like to find/  what’s not found / at once, but lies …)


Hard luck and trouble
Been my only friend
I’ve been on my own
Ever since I was ten

[…]

You know wine and women
Is all I crave
A big legged woman
Gonna carry me to my grave

[…]

[Chorus]Born under a bad sign
I’ve been down since I began to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck
I tell ya, I wouldn’t have no luck at all[Outro]Yeah, I’m a bad luck boy
Been havin’ bad luck all of my days, yes

AG2023_1078353a or Rose Freedom is near

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Untitled (Freedom is near, Rose, Night), 2008-2023.


““The night time is the right time,” a time to reveal and fulfill desire, a time to dream, the world of the unknown, the hallucinatory.”

“Yes, “it’s always night,” which is why we absolutely need light”

“they had to camouflage their boldness”

– Kelley, Freedom Dreams

Dreaming or invent instruments that allow us to do politics at that level

Emanuele Coccia offers us his reflections on fashion, ecology, and transforming city/home. (Exhibition-Magazine, 2021(?))

This pandemic has shown us a kind of corporeal continuity between all human beings. This is a big deal because it’s a physical and sensible consciousness that we recognized in a single, selfsame flesh. It’s the first time that there has been a global event where everyone is aware of at the same time with a unification of bodies and consciousnesses. Everything that we had created to produce politics became obsolete: nations no longer make sense. We are truly on a single planet, and we will have to invent instruments that allow us to do politics at that level. This is true for the current question of vaccination. Everything that we have produced was conceived for a fractured world. The progressivist discourses – the “true left” – are those which will allow us to understand how to find a non-imperialist way of living together, which is at the level of this self-evident truth and this shared suffering. This virus has definitely closed the door on the political and cultural experiment of the 20th century. All of the current debates about identity are not very interesting. They are battles defending territory which has already been conquered. The great battles of the future are elsewhere I think.

Coccia with Sophie Abriat

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We only need design because we are born without having either the experience or the idea of happiness. This is why we spend the rest of our lives observing, touching, measuring the world and tasting it to understand what makes us feel good. In this way, we also explore our body and our mind. This continuous exploration of self and the world in search of happiness is what we call dreaming. And design is the ambition or claim that there is a method in the way we dream, and the attempt to give a single name to all possible forms of happiness.

[…]

Actually, what interests me most is not to observe the present, but to explore what in the present is already working on shaping the world of after tomorrow. And not tomorrow, which is always a consequence of today, but after tomorrow — the kind of future that is not yet predictable and that is unrecognisable compared to the present. That is precisely why it can afford to coincide with an ancestral past. The most radical form of exploration for this should be in dreams: the dream is already an exploration, and being able to explore the dreams of others is the most important faculty for any creative. So much more than observation, dreaming is the most powerful tool of exploration.

A Take On Fashion: Emanuele Coccia

Let’s begin again

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Popova on John O’Donohue’s thoughts on beginnings–

Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over.


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Also, O’Donohue on friendship :

In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul… This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person’s individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny.

The Inner Landscape of Beauty, On Being (02808).

Adrift in darkness or an unknowing

Adrift in a Stranger’s Galaxy, Dan Romer. Station Eleven (Music from the HBO Max Limited Series)


“Love is not something to do, but something to be experienced, and something to go through”
“Busyness will not disguise its lack.”
“the perennial problem of artists: time, and what to do in it.
(ZS)


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The world’s light shines, shine as it will,
The world will love its darkness still.
I doubt though when the world’s in hell,
It will not love its darkness half so well.

Richard Crashaw


And hopefully “out of this hole” and “crawls” pass; enchanted.