04-02-2026
On March 18, 2026, the Avery Center let TINYisPOWERFUL open its residency to the Charleston public.
Today, two weeks later or so, Marcus has invited a local artist, Adrian Rivera Lopez, to present his work as a painter. I am his co-presenter. We chose the Liz Lerman Critical Exchange Process as a format to make the presentation a serious, professional event and not just a conversation around the likes and don’t-likes of participants. Right away, I proposed to Marcus that we ask Gwylène to facilitate the session. She knows the process well and is a proponent of deep thinking whenever art is the subject.
To me, asking a third party (Gwylène, in this case) to be facilitator, is a move intended to remind ourselves how important it is to always seek the right person for the right task and not believe that, in the collective, everybody can and/or should do everything, every time. Of course, here, Gwylène is one of us, but the advise applies, still. In the context of TINYisPOWERFUL, autonomy does not mean self-reliance. It means, I believe, knowing what each of us can and cannot do, facing our shortcomings and asking around. I don’t know of an action that does not require the direct or indirect intervention of an ‘other’ … Except maybe acts of spontaneous violence? —– Yesterday also, we were visited by Amy of the Donnelley Foundation. From what Gwylène told me, she was coming to see if we were going to start doing serious fundraising because, if we want funds from them, we also need to seek funding from our end. As a matter of fact, Amy started head on! As soon as Victoria introduced the work, she interjected: Yes, you could sell this! I don’t remember what ‘this’ was but, from there on, the three of us, Marcus, Victoria and I, managed to avoid the topic altogether! Yet, it was a substantial exchange which lasted over two hours!
Lately, I have been even more concerned with the place of art in the development of cultures. I have even come up with rather sharp, direct articulations … which I promptly forgot! The gist of it? If, along with Jean Dubuffet among others, I believe that “…art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of communication …”, an active principle of culture. Only its sharing as open source material can assure its transmission to others. Open source, in this case, to me, implies universally accessible as a product of collective intelligence, unencumbered with dollar value or considerations of ownership.
There is also this sentence by artist Cannupa Hanska Luger which constantly illuminates my understanding of art’s role in cultures. It places the artist at the living center of social life. Here it is. I give it to whoever will read it as a treasure of humanity,
“What makes an artist is the beauty of her/his life.”
Canupa Hanska Luger
On day 10-21-2023 of this journal, I quoted Luger at length.
This particular sentence has sealed, for me, the understanding that, if there is a relationship between art and beauty, and if “what makes an artist is the beauty of his/her life”, there will be no peaceful resolution of the present world-wide chaos as long as the reserve of non-violence that still cements the humanity in our common humanity is denied the coming out of all its compelling beauty.
In other words, although the global powers-that-be are presently pouring enough violence over the world’s populations to keep them stunned and paralyzed by images of whole lands and cityscapes turned into open death pits … their clinging on were-it a strand of life’s beauty, will keep them creating art, individual and collective. Beauty will grow again&again, like quackgrass on a presidential tee box.
04-04-2026
This disjointed ode to art and beauty – acceptable only as long as it is not the art piece which defines beauty but the life of its creator – has brought me back to the “Tale of Charleston” turned “Tale for Reparations”.
Why, this morning – with the Tale forcefully in mind – did my body, in a move so unusual for a rheumatic oldie, spontaneously enter into a dance that combined the right-to-left-to-right-and-back-again horizontal extension of one arm with the repetitive, vertical movement of the other?
There was so much enthusiasm in that physical expression!
What did entice me to repeat it until I could translate it into words?
What did?
After a while, it struck me.
My mind had finally conceptualized what my body had been gesturing.
Here it is:
Justice is to History what vertical time is to horizontal time.
The advent of Justice dents the unrolling of History.
Reparations take hold when History intersects with Justice.
However:
The intersection of History with Justice requires that political systems have a level of political maturity. America may never reach maturity if it keeps electing octogenarians – or fakes – or crooks, as presidents and representatives.
I used to know quite a bit about the history of Reparations in South Africa. That country was lucky enough to have a Bishop Tutu, a Nelson Mandela and other public figures actively supported by most citizens and a dedicated minority of Afrikaners. Blacks represented at least 75% of the whole population at the time. In that undemocratic country, there was Apartheid. There were two systems of Justice. It took a high level of political intelligence and calculations for the two sides of the divide to understand that there would never be peace in the country if History kept being repressed, denied, erased.There would never be peace in South Africa without a process of Truth seeking, Truth telling and – finally – talks of a possible Reconciliation of Whites with Blacks.
To me, Truth and Reconciliation are founding blocks for Reparations.
As a legal term, reparation means compensation for damages.
I suppose that, in capitalist America, it can only translate into dollars! But please,
Can’t repairing just be mending?
As in mending two pieces of cloth together to make one,
A few threads woven between two or more shreds
Or something, anything …
Bits of an old work shirt?
A discarded uniform?
Torn by accident, time, wear.
War?
No more war – Reconciliation.
04-06-2026
Dominique Eddé is a Lebanese writer, very close friend with Edouard Saïd. In her 2017 book “Edouard Saïd: le roman de sa pensée”, she also covers his great talent as musician: an accomplished pianist:
“Saïd thought that, with the universal language of music, one could transcend conflicts, were it only in a limited framework and for a limited time. Or at least offer a chance to breathe differently, to exhale, and above all to open windows, initiate movement. In fact, following Saïd’s work closely means adopting movement as a method of thinking, and certainly as a means of combat, against totalitarianism”.
If Saïd can make such a conceptual and spiritual leap from playing the piano to combating totalitarianism; if he can see movement as a method of thinking, why couldn’t “a Tale of Charleston” morph into “a Tale for Reparations”, since I too dismiss whatever force could slow down the constant flow of transformations in/with community artists actually bathe in, as initiators or as participants?
The Saïd leap in question is possible only if one remembers that what defines the totalitarian State is its use of all repressive forces necessary to repress whatever force challenges its Order. Even the shadow of a ‘movement’ may loosen, however slightly, the strait jacket of oppression restraining the social body.
Now, what is art but a loosener? Particularly, what is music but open space for the free agent that sound is … notes, arpeggios, symphonies … operas, so often glorious calls for liberty!
04-11-2026
Yesterday night Gwylène and I went to the neighborhood mosque. Marcus had prompted us to come to a meeting where he would speak about police violence in Charleston/North Charleston. Definitely a surer way to reach to other communities than TINYisPOWERFUL’s Tuesday Zooms.
I loved the diversity and the energy of the 30 or 40 people who congregated there. And I was surprised to meet a few we knew. There was food to be shared as well. And we had a chance to exchange with a young muslim woman we would never have crossed path with otherwise.
That is exactly what I mean when I decry the lack of exposure of the collective TINYisPOWERFUL! What is ART but EXPOSURE? I did not write exposition though, which has a scent of voyeurism! Making and showing Art is a way to gather, to gift (the verb), to communicate, disseminate individual imaginings and turn them into points of collective reflection, research and discovery.
—–
How constantly the Middle East, is invading my conscious! First, Palestine, of course; second, this book about Edouard Saïd; third, going to the Charleston mosque and conversing with a young muslim. And now, there is this series of four articles (in French) about ‘Orientalism’. One of them shows how the colonial West has appropriated ‘oriental’ art, particularly in France.
There is an exhibition at the Louvres-Lens; “Beyond the Thousand Nights – (His)stories of Orientalisms”. Clearly, the word ‘beyond’ and the liberating plurals suggest a challenging art show. What intrigues me though is how the curators made their choice of artifacts and how they decided to display them – judging from what I read in a Joseph Confavreux article of Mediapart, (I trust him to be a brilliant journalist at the intersection of art and politics).
Curators’ choices:
– to exhibit artifacts chronologically, yes. But a chronology which does not reflect the date pieces were made but the date they entered a French museum collection.
– to challenge the usual classification of artifacts into Fine Arts, Decorative Arts, Craft; because it does not reflect the cultures they come from originally.
– to display ‘orientalist’ objects which historically precede – often by far – what western museums qualify as ‘oriental’.
– to invite artists’ commentaries on orientalism by showing pieces which
“cast a different light on history, question the present, therefore re-open the future”, (Anabelle Ténèze). EG, a work by Kader Attia: a very large glazed platter, broken, roughly mended and displayed as an art piece, thus augmenting its cultural and symbolic meaning.
All these museographic ways reveal the potentiality, within art objects, to suspend or subvert time, challenge geography, question histories, in a constant play of mirror images bouncing across time and space.
To me, THIS way of showing art represents a parcellisation of the structures to which all our academic knowledge clings for dear life. In that I am happy to witness the chipping away at mainstream clichés. I only hope that “a Tale of Charleston/for Reparations” also actively participates in this process. Indeed each piece in the Tale installation is dedicated to a particular subject around which I create an itemized critical list. Each item, then, is translated into a form, a material, a color, evoking a concept, a symbol, an analogy, an archetype – and finds its place on a dedicated ‘scaffold’.
This same constructivist/additive method of ‘sculpting’ was used to build ten pieces, two of them in two parts. It took me four to five years to achieve this work. Not that the making of the pieces is very complicated or technical – in fact it was not at all: I had long chosen to use almost exclusively repurposed materials and to avoid any fancy joinery. However, the synchronization of the visual/physical with the conceptual is what proved to be the true challenge. Also, for me to consider the installation ‘resolved’, it took around eight hundred of a thirteen hundred page Diary-turned-Journal, started July 26, 2023 … and still in the writing.
04-15-2026
“Si par miracle
un roi se convertissait à la justice,
il devrait baisser les yeux
et s’agenouiller
devant
le poète”
If, by some miracle,
a king would convert to justice,
he should lower his gaze
and kneel
before
poets
Abdellatif Laâbi, in La poesie est invincible
“L’homme est un accident de la vie sur terre.”
Poetry is invincible
“Man is an accident of life on earth.”
(my translation)
04-16-2026
Today was the day when I met Kela again for the first time in three months. It was a genuine pleasure.
We were assembled for a ‘I Like My Tea Sweet‘ podcast, led by Rayn. Victoria was the technician. The subject was WOOD. Why were Kela and I invited to meet around our interest in woodworking? Potentially a good topic although, had we stayed on it too long, the conversation may have turned stale. I do not know how deep Kela’s love for wood really is. And mine is not exclusive at all! So, we may not have lasted one hour! Good thing then that Rayn’s ‘Opening Question’ (a tradition at ILMTS), was something like: Do you live your life intentionally or do you follow its caprices? To me an impossible question to answer except to say that intentionality or not, life is all we have … and art is our guide!
Well, from there, we meandered a while before reaching topic.
My interest in this was to bring up Gaston Bachelard who still is unmatched at fleshing out humanity’s (un)conscious relationship with the four Elements: water, earth, air, fire. I had reviewed my Bachelard a bit ahead of time. It inspired me to engage head on with a spontaneous: well … wood burns and wood floats … From there I extrapolated and jumped into the poetics of Elements which I ended with a pitch for ‘Earth and Reveries of Will: an essay on the imagination of matter’…
After more than forty and some years, I still hold Bachelard very precious and so revealing. I was reading him then. At the time, teaching in Nancy with Gwylène, I was also deep into Jung! What a mix that is! Augmented with our frequent conversations with Roger Decaux, the painter, who had been head of the ‘Friends of Gaston Bachelard’ earlier on, in Paris!
Erinnerungen!
I was young again!
Altogether a nice podcast session.
—–
Later on a young woman from New York, who was given a private tour of Avery,
engaged me about the Tale. I made big efforts to synthesize for her my latest thoughts on how to read each detail in the installation as the visualization of one of the notions or subjects touched upon in the ‘Tale of Charleston/ for Reparations’. Not an easy pitch for me!
04-17-2026
At the Avery again today. With Gwylène, Victoria and Marcus this time. We need to nail down a schedule for the last weekend of TINYisPOWERFUL’s residency at the Center. It looks like we are trying to concentrate all our hopes for a maximal public presence on the last Friday day and Saturday morning!
EG, Marcus and I will hold our Question/Relay session on Friday day.
Gwylène and Victoria are pressing us to come up with a synopsis and a title. This is forcing us to pursue further the serious conversation we had started in early February.
—–
This session ended around lunch time. Now, after digesting, I can report!
For Marcus Reparations means restitution of land. It is clear.
For me, there is more to reparations than material compensations. I intended to stress the moral, spiritual damage done to African Americans and others.
There is such a deep denial of their humanity in slavery, so much disfiguration of American history that said humanity and said history must be restored. A process of (re)contextualization must take place as well. Today’s value system is not yesterday’s. Yet, no change can dissociate causes from consequences. History requires a restitution of chronology. This process of righting wrongs, in all its complexities has a name: Reconciliation, following the South African leadership of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu (my hero). However difficult it is to overcome the flaws, to engage in reconciliation is a human necessity.
Marcus is tired of all the talking around ‘Truth’ which never gets anywhere. He does not seem as critical of Reconciliation.
We believe that, on the basis of this good start of a deeper conversation, we can turn to finding a title for the Question/Relay session. Not easy to find as few words as possible to condense such a crucial subject! But, at the end we come up with:
REPARATIONS: LAND AND MORE.
And now I can come to the revelation of the day.
Not so much a revelation than a Eureka moment.
In the midst
Of this jumble of thoughts
Around REPARATIONS
How could I not seeeee
That the LAND
In ‘Land and More’
Is not only
ACREAGE?
It is GAIA
The PLANET
The whole MOTHER EATH.
So much REPAIRING
It NOW needs
So many skills
So much LEARNING
Of LOVE
Of CARE it so
Urgently
So intentionally
So completely
REQUIRES
04-20-2026
BUT THERE IS HOPE
Lately, I have consistently come across a name: Ernst Bloch.
I looked it up quickly ONCE but, in the April issue of ‘le Monde Diplomatique’, there is a TINY review of ‘Le Principe Esperance’ – in French – ’The Principle of Hope’ – in English – translation of the German ‘Das Prinzip Hoffnung’, a series of three volumes of philosophy. Fifteen hundred pages! So scary that I knew right away that Mr Bloch would remain unknown to me! However, the Diplo’s review was offering a fresh approach: a condensed version – with the subtitle ‘Selected excerpts; with footnotes and a presentation’ by Joël Gayraud’. A puny but powerful 100 page marvel, not yet translated in English! For sure, this short version of a philosophy treatise was my ticket to Ernst Bloch!
A search of my usual sources, to see if there was a way to purchase the book in the US, was fruitless. What could be a US postal embargo on French books has made it impossible! Part, I suppose, of the anti-woke campaign which makes Mr.T look so small and France bigger than it really deserves at the moment! Well. I tried Quebec. There I was told that between tariff and freight, I would certainly not want to purchase the book in Canada! Then I wondered whether Albertine, the official French bookstore in New York, had ways to get around the boycott. I was assured by a French-speaking attendant there that I would get the book in a month or so. It is now on order!
This gives me the time to push forward into ‘On Generation’ by Emilie Hache, who proves to be an unbelievably thorough researcher. If I do not get discouraged by the complexity of the subject and read the whole book, I will have made a huge leap into understanding the difference, for example, between Generation and Creation. And, in the process, I will have firmed up my arguments around Ecofeminism.
Already this morning, during the first of three workshops by Gwylène called
COLLABORATORSHIP, I could confidently discuss the foundations of the present wave of authoritarianism in terms of Generation vs Creation. If we want to change the world, I argued with Rayn, beat the dictators and write a different story, we must appreciate how a philosophy based on the generation paradigm
fundamentally differs form one based on dogma, any dogma. The former brings liberation, the latter more of what we endure today.
—–
With Gwylène, we just listened to the ‘I Like My Tea Sweet’ podcast recorded last week, broadcast today. I was a bit worried about how little Kela and I could exchange about woodworking, which was the topic of the day! Well, what I keep from that session is my irritation at the use and abuse of the word intentional. Retrospectively, what irritates me even more is how little I pushed back against it. Since then I have reflected more and last night, at bed time, I wrote down the paragraph below:
In fact, ‘being intentional’, is (often) a phrase used to make ourselves believe thatthere are more norm-free spaces left in the universe than we may think. Shouldn’t we rather relate with these spaces in terms of diversity, of complexity, of the innumerable intersections there are? A vernacular relationship with vernacular realities.
The use of the word ‘vernacular’ doesn’t come out of the blue at all. It is used by Ivan Illich to affirm how the roots and essence of communities endure in the local, the informal, the handmade nature of collective intelligence. It is like a soil, enriched by the labor of man and animal, transformed by rain and drought.
————
Speaking of generation and soil, this morning, Harry, the moon-inspired gardener in the neighborhood, was describing to me what he does to make his garden generative. That is what Illich is talking about: how to make social interactions generative.
And why all this energy spent, directly or not, in the name of art and the spirit of the arts? Because it is unacceptable for the oligarchs in power to trash the earth and its citizenry as if they owned life itself.
If, for the last while, I hint at generation, creation or the vernacular at every turn, it is because these are big words. They are intimidating and I cannot face them head on! Presently I am slowly absorbing them, attempting to fit them into my own vocabulary, tinkering with them if necessary to find a place where they will become familiar. For example, this morning, there was a zoomed meeting of Alternate ROOTS where I heard Steven and Jamie explain how ROOTS values cannot be seen as enshrined and immovable. They should be seen as existing in a space within which they can evolve, adapt, grow in relevance. Where ‘enshrined’ and ‘immovable’ evoke diktats and dogmas, the image of a space for transformation makes room for multiple, diverse, nimble thinking, which can intersect with and push limits, welcome tolerance, research … better serve the arts and promote the spirit of the arts.
Determined as I am to integrate generation and creation in my vocabulary, I cannot but go back to Emily Hache’s book. It opens me clearly to understanding that the cause of causes for the precipice between generation and creation belongs in a cosmopolis bordered by mount Olympus in the North and mount Sinaï in the South – so to speak. Two mountains revered by their adoring flocks. However, Olympus is the floating geography of polytheism. Greek gods, in their vigor, their diversity, their flexibility, their irony, their ruse, their METIS, still irrigate our present mythologies. Sinaï, where the vertical law of the lord was revealed to mankind, belongs in a war zone where the single god of monotheism, if I may, has little to do with Santa Claus, the jovial extrovert!
That’s what separates the dogmatic from the vernacular.
The question is:
Will the Book of Truth
Ever find comfort on
An unweeded bed of flowers?
My guess is:
We are in for a bout of polytheism.
Monotheism and/
Or Golden Calvinism would only
Bring our common planet
To a common destruction.
Think.