09-01-2024
Omari is staying with us this Labor Day weekend. This gave us the opportunity to talk at length about the ROOTS camp, where he was voted in as an ExCom member. I hope he will carry our criticisms with him … and our praise, to this governing body. In very few words, my dissatisfaction lies in this basic question: WHERE ARE THE ARTS? in all these hyper-energetic sessions. Everyone seems consumed with membership organizational questions during the day, evenings being left to entertainment or emotional outpouring sequences.
Gwylène’s initiative to ask many members about the idea of a ROOTS artists’ residency network of places in the South was exactly what a yearly gathering of the membership permits. She actually wanted me to accompany her. But we quickly realized that I am too slow-moving at this point to catch up with constantly moving crowds! I rally welcomed the idea though. It showed that Rooters are eager to innovate but are not really given the opportunity. At the full membership level that is.
The Charleston Rhizome initiated many such invitations for Rooters to come to South Carolina, stay with us, and work on common projects like ‘Changing the Beat’ and the whole ‘Future is on the Table’ effort. Who else, though? Which other rhizome has this in mind? Ask Angela and Muthi what it did for them, and ourselves, to come here for a week at a time and work together on in-progress projects? The practice of art is too traditional at ROOTS to make a difference. And … how can one get to deep conversations about aesthetics if art is just the emotional expression of individual Rooters?
Will I attempt an other letter to Wendy? I may be discouraged at this moment but every time I think about it or have a chance to exchange with Victoria, Omari, Gwylène … my ideas get clearer and sharper. More to the point. It is all a matter of being obsessive-creative. Not spastic. Just haunted by the Spirit of the Arts.
09-04-2024
Yesterday, at the Creative Sync – speaking of being obsessive-creative, I explained how, when Gwylène and I were running G&M-French Café, literally everything we encountered was gauged in terms of it, the café. We were obsessive and, in turn, creative. When we affirm that the café was a piece of art, of in/with community art, we mean to say that it was primarily the actualization of an aesthetic push to formalize our understanding of what SERVICE is. We were not in for the money, although it was a means of making money. We were not in for the cooking, the long hours, the myth, although longevity brought recognition. We had chosen to open a public place to bring to others what other others had brought to us. And that is exactly what we got from the community we served: RECIPROCITY. Not with universal praise, of course. But, just like art, business, tiny or not, virtuous or vicious, is an exercise in socialization, which is the only way I know to practice our humanity!
—–
Today, after a dental appointment, Gwylène went to the Charleston County Elections Office. She was taking an exam to be certified as a pole manager in November. Since we retired, she has been a pole worker for many elections. She will not miss the opportunity to serve again this time, such a crucial election round for America.
To me, this is an affirmation of her responsibility as an in/with community artist. In clear continuity with her café dedication.
Martin-Luther King was talking about the Arc of Justice … I would rather talk about the intimate dedication to Equity and Access which, when carried forward and acted upon by artists, becomes a beautiful tool towards such a lofty goal. The Arc represents a different scale of collective engagement.
—–
Serendipitously, on the desktop, I spot a screenshot from somewhere I don’t remember. I want to move it from the screen into a file. I read it:
“We serve clients but I think one way that we can transform the profession is to rethink that and how we might serve society, beyond the clients.”
Although the wording is not very clear, isn’t it weird that I find this quote at this moment? What it tells me is that, not only am l poor at double-tasking, my whole bubble ‘goes it’ one subject at a time! But what a subject this is! It deserves that I modify the quote to make it clearer, without changing its meaning, of course.
“We serve clients but I think that one way we can transform the profession is to rethink that, beyond the clients, we also serve society. Then, how can we do it better?”
Gwylène says that I wrote the original quote. I don’t think so. In any case, this is exactly what I was trying to write about earlier.
The underpinnings of this thinking say that, beyond every individual person, including oneself, there is a social network, a family, a whole collective, carried forth by a whole history of micro-histories and so on. Here, I am not necessarily thinking in terms of a Macrocosm-Microcosm binary, some dialectical rhythm propelling history forward. Such inner mechanism would only restrict the mind into conformity; erase the grain, the texture of differences. Most of all, I believe it would ignore the possibility of erasure(s) of memories, voluntary or not.
In the context of this diary, where TINY BUSINESS is viewed as an art form or a practice ‘in the spirit of the arts’, I need to consider how far conventional thinking is from understanding the relationship between ART and TINY BUSINESS. In the vocabulary of business schools and economics, the absence of Art – the concept – represents the de-facto erasure of the arts – the practice – as spaces for open-source making/thinking, gate-keepers of memories, witnesses of cultures. Such is the exceptionalism of the business field, where the economy is not at the service of the people, but the people at the service of the economy.
09-07-2024
Sandrine Rousseau raises the importance of TIME as a democratic issue, a political issue. Good for her! I still remember a meeting of the conNECKtedTOO team where Theron was present. In one of my intervention, I uttered the idea that one thing we could offer Tiny Businesses was time! I could not really go much further on the subject, that day. My enthusiasm was chocking on ignorance! Today, I see the intersection as clear as daylight! Mostly, I understand that patience is one of the components of time. The rehabilitation of time as a universal right will take patience! It is a high stakes political issue.
Bourgeois enjoy extended lunch hours, while their essential support workers, including the cooks of that extended meal, hardly have time for a sandwich. Time …
“Par exemple, je suis convaincue que la question du temps, et de la libération du temps vis-à-vis du travail et de la consommation, sera la prochaine conquête politique à défendre. Le sujet peut parler à tout le monde et notamment aux milieux populaires, qui ont beaucoup moins de liberté à cet égard que les milieux privilégiés.” Sandrine Rousseau
Translation:
[ For example, I am convinced that the issue of time, and of the freeing of time – for work and consumption – will be the next political conquest to defend. This topic speaks to everybody, including the working class which, as far as that goes, enjoys much less freedom than the upper class. ]
09-11-2024
Day after – the first Trump/Harris debate, the 8th TINY Investigation and the latest Creative Sync of TINYisPOWERFUL.
(Has the fateful day of 09-11-2001 lost some of its symbolism? Although a lot of what the world is enduring today is a consequence of it?)
A minute ago, I visit Gwylène in her studio. She is watching the video of the Morenga/ Victoria-Marcus meeting. I watch some of it with her. And I hear Victoria identifying TiP as made of Pam, Rayn, Marcus and herself! No GG, no JM!
All this tells me that the legacy has been handed down and that GG and I may be very active within the collective, we may open our house to meetings, we may have a strong voice still, but we are free of TiP and TiP of us. And this is good.
This new freedom, at a time when Kamala Harris may bulldoze the bully, and when we are having a whale of a time for being the only two white folks among ten Black friends, at our house, from 6 to 9 pm … should put me in a very positive disposition. The joy surrounding the last few days is indispensable to envision a strong ending to ‘a Tale of Charleston’, as I am determined to change the focus of my work before the end of this year. Art-wise, the final part of the installation may be a difficult undertaking: I need optimism, a smile, humor and hope to still project forward.
From where I stand, right now, I believe I want to spend the next chunk of the foreseeable time editing this dairy/journal. I think I can say this because I have a clear idea of what I mean. I mean, to use the diary as a path where, every time there is a thought which deserves development, I develop it and articulate it with the rest. Tedious it will be, and a desk job! The work of a writer, really; one who knows that editing is at the heart of the process. I am not certain to find the capacity, in me, to see this work to its end. I will try and I may, who knows, develop a sense of what ‘collaboration’ could look like in this context. This would be the best outcome! To unlock the myth of the solitary writer, hard at work behind the keyboard. And also, to deflate that of ‘the personal diary’, as a sacrosanct, secret stash of an artist’s unique treasures.
09-12-2024
And today I may have found a translation or rather an equivalency for the French word
HORS SOL. It is UNTETHERED. No satisfactory imaginative translation though, beside
above-ground thinking! Really? How about ‘unrooted’?
09-13-2024
This morning … a thought, after Gwylène tells me about the panel she was at yesterday.
A traditional format where invitee speakers face a silent audience, only granted a five minute slot at the end to ask questions. That’s why I didn’t go. otherwise the topic was interesting enough: the role of art in a democracy. But no, not such such conditions .
From what Gwylène describes, obviously, each panelist has a definition of art, democracy and other such key words. Definitions condition the debate …
I think we are no longer in the age of definitions as basis for debates of opinion. We are in the age of intersectionality. Where the meaning of words results from a search for their relation(s) with other words, or concepts, ideas, paradigms … images? A process which, in my ignorance, reminds me of AI, when it relies on existing material, man-made, to build up its answers! Except that finding intersections is both, a creative process and an accelerator of forward thinking, whereas AI’s answers can only be as active as their sources which, by definition, are of the past.
09-14-2024
A discovery: Manon Soavi, a writer, philosopher, Aïkidoka (practitioner of Aïkido), and disciple of Itsuo Tsuda, a famous Japanese wiseman. Manon just wrote “the Anarchist Master”, where she explains that this title is not an oxymoron! And I jus bought one of Tsuda’s books, “the Non-Doing”, originally published in France and in French under the title “le Non-Faire”,
which is the version I purchased. The book is also in English, to be found at Yume Edition. I could have bought the latest book by Manon Soavi instead, but it was very . expensive. Instead, I watched a long interview of her, made in Montreal recently, where she draws the fundamentals of the Non-Doing philosophy. This approach to appeasement of body and mind, seeking to experience them as one, was familiar to me in my Nancy days. It coincided with my work on Carl Jung which supported enormously my teaching of sculpture and the development, with Gwylène, of our collaborative class called “Space and its Representations”. From here and now, and very superficially, I see the quest for ‘Space” as one for silence and Non-Doing. Which until this day inspires my belief that the practice of art and of the spirit of the arts is a way to find unity of body and mind, the other as brother and the path to equity and access.
The most reinforcing moment of Soavi’s video is when she names David Graeber’s work and eco-feminism as two of her present resources. It is this constellation of knowledge which feeds ‘a Tale of Charleston –> a Tale for Reparations’ till this very minute!
These days, I am at peace.
Below is the Montreal interview of Manon Soavi:
09-15-2024
This morning, reading a Yes! magazine article about historic monuments being toppled in the 2020, I imagine a project of civic engagement called ‘TINY TEMPLE’! Of course, an incredibly ambitious scheme to create, at the level of cities, districts, neighborhoods, small public spaces for practicing our awareness of others, more clearly, the awareness of Differences as socio-political assets.
Right away, I jumped on my architecture bandwagon and imagined physical structures, build to last, symbols of the ongoing need for tolerance and appreciation of others. Let’s call this civic love, with its civic temples! Something like a streamlined masonic impulse to save the republic from the evils of sectarianism.
I suppose this Tiny Temple idea also comes from synthesizing thoughts about space,
silence, Aïkido, scholarship … and reading about monuments and whatever else congregates around such paradigms. I believe that most of societal violence stems from misunderstanding how these profoundly political topics intersect, philosophically and in daily life. Nothing new here! But what is ‘today’ doing to their complexity? How much does Trump’s – for example – incitation to violence on Haitians in Springfield Ohio interfere with everybody’s good judgement?
– there are laws against the incitation to violence
– the man should be arrested
– why is the State so shy or flat-footed here?
– how do immigration and history intersect?
– how do individual nation-states treat border security?
– how do security and violence intersect?
– what would history teach about people’s migration(s)?
– differences between migration, emigration, immigration?
– Hiroshi’s cause: open-ended passport for artists!
– what would the free circulation of ideas do to e/im/migration?
– what took down the Schengen ideal in Europe?
– what is taking down Europe altogether?
– border walls, how do they affect the world’s consciousness?
– Palestine, what does it do to world dreams of peace?
– civic and political responsibility of leaders
– the rise of totalitarianism, is it a universal mechanism?
– or an archetypal mechanism?
– I have to talk to Celeste
– I will expose my idea of “Tiny Temple” at the Creative Sync
– ideas are best when consumed fresh
– how far have we gone from Haiti, violence, civic consciousness?
– is this what surrounding an idea is?
– does it lead to understanding?
– to definitions?
– to intersections?
– an exercise in consistency or inconsistency?
09-16-2024
Again today, Trump’s life appears to have been threatened. He was playing golf on his private club, hole #5, when a security staff detected a AK47sticking out of a bush. He shot in that direction. The shooter escaped but was caught a bit later on a highway.
Skepticism seems to be rampant, knowing how this particular victim likes to be seen as victim, needs to be seen as victim to garner ever more support. Brings him closer to sainthood, at least martyrdom.
—–
This morning, watching a conference on ‘decolonial ecology’. As mysterious a phrase as ‘anarchist master’* or ‘eco feminism’. All terms made more and more familiar in the last few years. Familiar but still mysterious. So mysterious in fact that even the four panelists of this morning still had a difficult time being readily clear when asked to dig deeper into any of them or into notions they suggest. They seemed to make intuitive sense but it was difficult to put them into words, as if they still were felt more than thought through. To me, this is a good thing. Let them be undefined, free to expand and to suggest change rather fall into the deepfreeze state of definitions which will only prime them for appropriation by the dominant languages of neoliberalism.
Isn’t it where the arts are most powerful, in any of their forms, to familiarize people with contemporary paradigms, to suggest unfamiliar imaginaries ? A self-serving question in my case – why not? – which relates to my decision to use no words in the Tale, besides its title … A concession maybe? How the arts circle around notions, suggest ideas, raise questions and unsettle minds. Also, how they foresaw the process I was describing some days ago: reaching the understanding of a word by surrounding it with intersecting notions, images, memories, art pieces … Thus avoiding the limitations of a ‘definition’.
* Manon Soavi affirms that the title of her book about Itsuo Tsuda, the Anarchist Master,
is not an oxymoron. Because she contends that anarchy is not what most people think it is: a state of social dissaray due to a lack of leadership. I can also describe a state where the autonomy of each member is guarantied by, for example, a leadership without other mandate than to support individual liberty over property … meaning that the collective good supersedes all other societal goals … One can imagine any variation of regime around such ideas, as David Graeber shows in his last book, quoted many times above. Again, this does not include situations where everyone can say or do anything at will. In anarchy, the common good is to remain prime. No one rules over anyone else. It is a state of ideal democracy!
09-18-2024
Yesterday was a rather decisive day for my future with the TINYisPOWERFUL collective. Arianne was back from Cuba where she said she had such an interesting time. She did not say such a great time, if I remember. After I told her how I remembered the canvassing of Havana’s streets grid by a uniformed yet discreet young police force, she explained how she, also, observed signs of a very controlled society and came to understand that artists, at that level, had a modicum of freedom others did not.
I while later, Victoria reported on her Zoom experience of her first ROOTS ExCom meeting. First thing she shared on screen was a text introduced by a quote of Mao Tse Dung. No worry, no conflict for anyone? I got impatient. Castro, then Mao … then who? Trump and Putin maybe? “Mao, I remember saying, was one of the most violent, authoritarian leaders of the 20th century. Under his watch, millions were killed, incarcerated … and there was no freedom except for the Vanguard, always ready to defend its privileges at any cost. This is the nature of revolutions … Besides, they end up eating their own children … Please, think before you quote dictators ex tempore*. It is like going back to Political education 001!
Please, one of you read Hannah Arendt’s ‘the Origins of totalitarianism’. She was German, Jewish, a refugee in America. A philosopher who knew what she was writing about.”
In my mind, this was a warning for all, including myself. I am willing to be a member of the collective but will not be taking on any organizational task. In a way, this is only a repeat of an earlier decision to step back, leave it (all) to the younger generations. A reminder then!
This reminder, coupled with the sense of urgency to finish the work on the Tale, and the growing impatience to edit this diary, is what I needed vis-a-vis the collective. No letting it down. A necessary passing on of the torch.
And we will see …
Sure enough, this raised Victoria’s attention and she called me asking if she could come by. Gwylène and I offered her lunch. She said no. As we were eating, we had a long exchange … One of her readings, lately, has been Augusto Boal’s ‘Theater of the oppressed’. From thread to needle, one thing leading to an other, we came to talking about the place of love in social dialogue, teaching. And I surprised myself being so clear about the risk there is of misunderstanding the meaning and place of love in societal situations. Here, I proposed, love is a collective disposition of openness and attention to others, receptivity and reciprocity. Very little to do with the familiar meaning of ‘ I love this’ – ‘I love this or that person’ – ‘I love it!’, or the empty ‘love you’ that ends a call … I even went as far as evoking what I would respond to students who ventured a ‘I love this’ as substitute to articulating an argument why. ‘Who cares what you love?’ I would reply. Of course this shocked many students to the point where they would complain to the authorities! But actually, this short rebuff was one of the best ways to give ‘Art’ its importance beyond self-expression or individual taste.
* ex tempore: very good candidate for the translation of ‘hors sol’ I have struggled with
lately. As good as untethered or unrooted. There is also ‘ex cathedra’! and more to come … such an essential issue.
9-21-2024
Gwylène asks me to rush to my studio where a serendipitous sun ray from above is animating the piece I am working on right now: a sedan chair. Indeed, it is beautiful and shows off some of the good features of the piece, like the series of slots on both right and left panels, and the simplified, stripped down design chosen to emphasize function over formal, decorative features. Here, the function is NOT to carry some physically challenged nobility but, as the last piece I will make for ‘a Tale of Charleston –> a Tale for Reparations’, the function is to evoke the centrality of the State, of Education and of public spectacle. For this purpose, what is left of the sedan chair, then, is a pair of poles holding a human-size box, open on both ends. Sides are plain panels barely adorned with vertical slots, symmetrical left and right. One of the openings, large, offers a visual interpretation of a generic deliberation chamber, particularly its podium with a sober alter-like desk and three ceremonial seats. Sobriety is countered visually by very colorful draperies with a flower motif sewed on tulle. Behind the desk, a wall with, on the left, a high and narrow door and above, with a three clerestory window ensemble.
09-22-2024
Typical dilemma: do I go to the studio now or do I take up the Diary to write about this historian I heard this morning, who shook up my mind when he distinguished between ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’. It reminded me of the distinction I make, in the realm of the visual arts, between ‘abstraction from’ and ‘abstraction to’. My understanding of this difference came to me when I was leafing through a typical book about the work of Piet Mondrian, where the author was illustrating his evolution from painting realistic trees to stained glass-like simplified versions of trees, to geometric renditions, to what we best know of his work now: what he himself sees as the universal language of abstraction. A language which, for Mondrian, has reached into spirituality, aspirations, visions of the future. Of course, in such a metamorphosis, time is a major factor. But not in the book I was looking at! As for me, I have translated this whole cosmology into the more general and less spiritual notion of imaginary(ies), or something close.
… Snyder, a history teacher at Yale (not a surprise!), was questioned about the war in Ukraine. He obviously knows that country intimately and loves it for what it stands for. At one point, the interview pivots to the topic of freedom; how Ukrainians define freedom, I presume. Snyder states, point blank (my remembrance, my interpretation): … unlike many people, when I talk about freedom, it is not freedom from one thing or an other. It is freedom to something like the condition necessary for our conceiving and attaining the imaginaries which give sense to our lives … To which I add my own remark: freedom, not always a quest. A condition. The quest is in cultivating freedom when we have it: this is endless!
Of course, this speaks to me, loud and clear. A meaning of freedom as, in my eyes, the condition for making social life not only possible but also desirable … And it takes a whole world of others to assume it. Here lies an innate reason for the rejection, by totalitarianism, of liberty (the state of being free): the former forces the fear of others upon people. The latter gives people a chance for civic love. Such deep-seated, emotionally irrigated, realities exist at the depth one has to reach to be political, politically active, an asset for others.
09-25-2024
Early this morning, I was speculating about the ending of ‘a Tale of Reparations’. How would it be possible, in this entire work, not to find a space for Palestine? I had stuck a Ukrainian flag on top of Charleston’s City Hall when the first half of the installation was shown in Columbia. What about now that I am finishing its last piece … for now? All sorts of clichés and metaphors sprung up, only to fail and fade. I am still facing the self-imposed restriction on words – This never helps! – I got up, went to the news … the next hurricane, the French political quagmire … then, on Mediapart, of course, the miracle article, here below:
How is it that the name of Maoz Inon appears, at this moment in a front article? He is the Israeli I named, in my October 7th 2023 entry of this very Diary, which concerned the start of the Second Nakba? He had lost both his parents, burned alive in their house, during the savage Hamas intrusion into Israel one year ago. He had a history of militancy for a peaceful resolution of the historic conflict. Here he is today, in Paris, promoting the French movement “les Guerrières de la Paix” – the [women]Warriors of Peace” – with Amira Mohammed, a Palestinian woman living in East Jerusalem, founder of the movement. Here they are both, sharing its slogan:
” Rêver de Paix est une Action “,
very hard to translate in English with so few words. Something like:
” Dreaming of Peace is an Action “.
To me, this whole episode comes at the right moment, at the right place, with the right content. First, it offers a flawless link between this diary and the Tale. Second, it is a vindication of my stand for a one-state-one-people resolution of the conflict. Also meaning that my quoting Hannah Arendt and constantly encouraging folks to read her ‘Origins of Totalitarianism’ is
timely. And it suggests a unique way to claim a space for Palestine in the installation. Of course, it will take a serious tweaking of my own ‘no words’ policy for the Tale. But words will only be part of an image-with-words! After all, photographing a pool of water with the sentence
” to Dream of Peace is a Political Act “
inscribed on its bottom surface is an artistic gesture! … Provided I can make it as un-Hamiltonian as I can! (You know, Hamilton, this photographer from the 1970’s? One of his specialties was in lewd shots through blurred lenses).
Anyway, sort of a calming veil is covering my morning mood! The pressure is down. But … what about the blood pressure? The doctor is asking me to keep a check on it! I have to measure it every day this week, and communicate it to her. All that because last week, at some medical occasion, it had shot up and up … as it does once in a while! After all, aren’t I living on the burning lip of an emotional volcano? Among all these events and intersections of facts? They can only raise awareness. And, doesn’t awareness mean pressure? Pressure to act and be more political.
… Unlike the group, the other day, which produced the film ‘Banned Together”, in Beaufort SC. “Education before Politics” – their slogan … How can education, public education, not be political? Or aren’t they just convinced that to be concerned about others, their education, their future, is a political act. I believe that, for them, politics means mostly dirty politicking. Although they show political savvy when they encourage Down Ballot Voting.
Yet, there is something else I need to remark on, after discovering the “Banned Together” cohort. It made me aware of the insularity of TINYisPOWERFUL, for not crossing path with groups like that, here or anywhere. Edouard Glissant would have said that what makes an archipelago, as compared to an island, is the consciousness of sharing the same waters with neighbors . The same constantly changing waters, that is. The poetics of complexity lies there. Changing waters, different cultures, interactions, intersections! To fully appreciate, explore and take advantage of such imbrications, we need each other so much. We are necessary, indispensable for each other.
LaShaea, who invited us to meet her at the preview of “Banned Together”,remarked that the group needed to work on its diversity. For sure it does … Maybe an other clue that they are just as insular as we are! Although we are multiracial and multi-generational. We need each other.
I venture: together we make a world. Separate … we make war.
09-26-2024
Get ready for the podcast!
Last week, the ‘closing question’ was : “How do you see the future of the arts in Charleston?” I have an answer and I want it to be public:
– The future of the arts in Charleston is up to groups and individual artists like us, collectives like TINYisPOWERFUL.
– Zinia (?) last week had it right. Her enthusiasm and optimism inspired me to come today.
– For example, Tuesday evening, there was a preview showing of a movie on banned books, “Banned together”, by a collective in Beaufort. Their crowd, though, did not look like ours. Most of their folks were white and middle class, I guess. But their fight was also ours.
– It made me think that we are insular. And they may be too.
– But we need them or groups like them and they need us, or collectives like TiP.
– TINYisPOWERFUL needs to federate with like-groups, organize together around art projects, present these works in the spirit of the arts, that is: with the understanding that art is a tool for equity, access, education, community, belonging.
– We are necessary for each other. We are indispensable to each other.
– Other example of federating our efforts with other arts organizations: the Future is on the Table, where the Charleston Rhizome Collective of Alternate Roots succeeded in having the participation of the Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs, the Gibbes Museum, the Halsey Gallery, the Clemson U. Architecture Extension, two local Public Schools and the Public Transit group of advocate Will Hamilton.
– Together, we make a world. Separate, we make war … my thought for the day!
09-28-2024
Netanyahu had Nashraoui killed. This conflict, which is not a war as it displays such an asymmetry, this genocide then, is all but consuming the whole political and cultural credit Israel had earned at the time of the Holocaust. This savagery makes me think of a revenge – of course on the weakest non-actor of its enactment. A hysterical blood ritual for the world to consume and ponder upon. But where is the certificate of morality of this
corrupt politician who is inflicting so much physical and mental harm on whoever lives under his usurped authority, Israelis or Palestinians?
—–
I am struggling with the sedan chair. Trying to find a way to memorialize the suffering of Palestine, somewhere, before I close down on the Tale altogether. Because I am determine to end this segment of my artistic life. I understand the presentation of in somewhere decent, in Charleston, will take time and I know there are many other searches I want to pursue.
09-30-2024
Hurricane Helene destroyed Asheville and the towns around Camille, likeHot Springs or Marshall. None of our friends have been especially hit but, damn, if the world doesn’t stop doping up on coal and oil, even the Tale will look like a ridiculous, inarticulate dream!
—–
This sedan chair shows resistance! The concentration of images around the concept of SPECTACLE is difficult. I think I have tackled the State as an over-fluffed public show-off place for power. It occupies one full side of the piece. The other side is divided into a library for culture; a Punch & Judy show for (children) theatre; a garden/arena urban space for outdoor gatherings. Inlaid, somewhere, as a subliminal reality, a memorial to Palestine and other places of human immolation. I will try to design it so that it can be read through the clerestory, as I wrote earlier.
—–
Ta-Nehisi-Coats is reappearing on the American scene. His book “The Message” is getting a lot of attention with its damning analysis of Israel’s stand in the Middle-East.
Portside is publishing a long article by Ryu Spaeth who affirms that, six years after his Case for Reparations, he is “… ready to take on Israel, Palestine and the American media”. I will buy the book when Alibris starts selling secondhand copies!
Had we not reserved next Tuesday evening for a dinner with friends, one of us would have gone to the Gaillard where, for $30.00, one would get one seat and the book, signed by the author himself!
A book tour gimmick. Has Ta-Nehisi-Coast given in?