✖ Via Michael Peck: “Dorothy”, 2009, oil on canvas, 137 x 137 cm
Michael Peck’s artistic practice is concerned with the sensation of disorientation and dislocation that is often felt within the post modern world. Exploring issues regarding the loss of cultural identity, his work particularly focuses on the effects within minority groups and individuals existing on the fringe who are challenged to assimilate within the larger community. (more)
Michael Peck was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1977.
• Sep 25, 2010 link notes tagged: art painter painting chaos end apocalypse human world order postmodernism disorientation dislocation anxiety realism hyperrealism photorealism
✖ Via Mondorama 2000: “L’Homme lutte contre le désordre croissant du monde” (Man struggles against the growing chaos of the world). L’ère atomique - Encyclopédie des sciences modernes - Tome VII : information et communications constitution et diffusion des messages, Abraham A. Moles, éd René Kister, Genève, 1960. Unknown illustrator.
Used copies of this book can still be find online (e.g. AbeBooks).
• Sep 02, 2010 link notes tagged: art illustration illustrator communication information order disorder chaos struggle man human theory time representation graphic data visualisation chart
 | This paradox of the carnival—which in the most general sense is the paradox of emotion, but in the most specific sense is the paradox of sacrifice- ought to be considered with the most critical attention. As children, we have all suspected it:perhaps we are all, moving strangely beneath the sky, victims of a trap, a joke whose secret we will one day know. This reaction is certainly infantile and we turn away from it, living in a world imposed on us as though it were “perfectly natural,” quite different from the one that used to exasperate us. As children, we did not know if we were going to laugh or cry but, as adults, we “possess” this world, we make endless use of it, it is made of intelligible and utilizable objects. It is made of earth, stone, wood, plants, animals. We work the earth, we build houses, we eat bread and wine. We have forgotten, out of habit, our childish apprehensions. In a word, we have ceased to mistrust ourselves. Only a few of us, amid the great fabrications of society, hang on to our really childish reactions, still wonder naively what we are doing on the earth and what sort of joke is being played on us. We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world. |
About Supervert.com :
If he were alive today, would the Marquis de Sade have a web site? (120 Days of Sodom, ancestor of the sex blog.) Would Charles Baudelaire employ venture capital for a sinister new internet startup, Fleurs du Mal Inc? Would Arthur Rimbaud use information technology to disorder the senses? Would any of them, were they alive today, find some way to advance literature by means of artificial intelligence?
Supervert is what an author can be when amplified by technology. Creator of books, web sites, and CD-ROMs, Supervert stands at the intersection of literature, technology, and perhaps also abnormal psychology — for in all its endeavors, Supervert utilizes the techniques of vanguard aesthetics to research the pathology of novel perversions. A sort of deviant Bauhaus, Supervert strives to create new experiences through the synthesis of art, technology, pornography, and philosophy. (more)
• Aug 07, 2010 link notes tagged: art literature Bataille paradox sacrifice carnival author book world representation order chaos apprehension trust mistrust anxiety childhood adulthood society community
| There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm. |
Here’s a French translation:
Il existe un tableau de Klee qui s’intitule Angelus Novus. Il représente un ange qui semble avoir dessein de s’éloigner de ce à quoi son regard semble rivé. Ses yeux sont écarquillés, sa bouche ouverte, ses ailes déployées. Tel est l’aspect que doit avoir nécessairement l’ange de l’histoire. Il a le visage tourné vers le passé. Où paraît devant nous une suite d’événements, il ne voit qu’une seule et unique catastrophe, qui ne cesse d’amonceler ruines sur ruines et les jette à ses pieds. Il voudrait bien s’attarder, réveiller les morts et rassembler les vaincus. Mais du paradis souffle une tempête qui s’est prise dans ses ailes, si forte que l’ange ne peut plus les refermer. Cette tempête le pousse incessamment vers l’avenir auquel il tourne le dos, cependant que jusqu’au ciel devant lui s’accumulent les ruines. Cette tempête est ce que nous appelons le progrès. (Source)
• Jul 23, 2010 link notes reblogged from chrbutler [via] tagged: art progress philosophy Benjamin history man angel past present future destruction catastrophe order chaos tempest
| By 10am it emerged that Mr Perkins had single-handedly moved the global price of oil to an eight-month high during a “drunken blackout”. Prices leapt by more than $1.50 a barrel in under half an hour at around 2am – the kind of sharp swing caused by events of geo-political significance. Ten times the usual volume of futures contracts changed hands in just one hour. |
• Jun 30, 2010 link notes tagged: communication technology economy finance lost loser money oil broker alcohol chaos
✖ Via Nicholas Di Genova: “Cuttlefish Floater”
“Drawing on the influence of anime, comic books, Otaku culture, and animal compendiums, the work of Nicholas Di Genova features an encyclopedic range of constructed creatures ranging from soft and nurturing to calculating and military. A vast and intense fabricated history acts as a backdrop to the hundreds of interconnected species, families and rival clans that find themselves projecting their habits, relations and environments to their viewers. Working with ink and animation paints, Di Genova’s paintings on mylar highlight his skill with line and his ability to manipulate colour. Always intense and intricately executed, Di Genova’s work rivals the quality of any fine art painter while firmly establishing itself on the fringes of contemporary art. The work brings together knowledge of art and design and samples from both fields, resulting in incredible visual and technical impact and an astonishing strong conceptual core which receives respect from both camps, a dichotomy often severely split.” (more at the LE Gallery)
Check his blo: Skeleton Hug.
• Jun 23, 2010 link notes tagged: art animal monster fragment hybrid chaos order desintegration artist drawing painting
| In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, [120] and Eros(Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. |
• Jun 17, 2010 link notes tagged: art literature book author classic antic genesis world mythology chaos order love communication relation representation
| [F]or as Earth, so he the World Built on circumfluous Waters calme, in wide Crystallin Ocean, and the loud misrule Of Chaos farr remov’d, least fierce extreames Contiguous might distemper the whole frame: And Heav’n he nam’d the Firmament: So Eev’n And Morning Chorus sung the second Day. |
• Jun 14, 2010 link notes tagged: art representation order chaos world God religion mythology genesis creation literature classic book author lost paradise loser
| Then the men of the Empire, who had been through so much, who had lived in such carnage, kissed their emaciated wives and spoke of their first love; they looked into the fountains of their natal prairies and found themselves so old, so mutilated, that they bethought themselves of their sons, in order that they might close their eyes in peace. They asked where they were; the children came from the schools, and seeing neither sabers, nor cuirasses, neither infantry nor cavalry, they asked in turn where were their fathers. They were told that the war was ended, that Cesar was dead, and that the portraits of Wellington and of Blucher were suspended in the antechambers of the consulates and the embassies, with these two words beneath: Salvatoribus mundi. Then there seated itself on a world in ruins an anxious youth. |
Here’s the original French version:
“Alors ces hommes de l’Empire, qui avaient tant couru et tant égorgé, embrassèrent leurs femmes amaigries et parlèrent de leurs premières amours ; ils se regardèrent dans les fontaines de leurs prairies natales, et ils s’y virent si vieux, si mutilés, qu’ils se souvinrent de leurs fils, afin qu’on leur fermât les yeux. Ils demandèrent où ils étaient ; les enfants sortirent des collèges, et ne voyant plus ni sabres, ni cuirasses, ni fantassins, ni cavaliers, ils demandèrent à leur tour où étaient leurs pères. Mais on leur répondit que la guerre était finie, que César était mort, et que les portraits de Wellington et de Blücher étaient suspendus dans les antichambres des consultats et des ambassades, avec ces deux mots au bas : Salvatoribus mundi.
Alors s’assit sur un monde en ruines une jeunesse soucieuse.” (WikiSource)
• Jun 06, 2010 link notes tagged: art author novel autobiography confession century war anxiety anguish youth generration history confusion desctruction chaos
| Not content with the merely weird, the DSM-IV also attempts to claim dominion over the mundane. Current among the many symptoms of the deranged mind are bad writing (315.2, and its associated symptom, poor handwriting); coffee drinking, including coffee nerves (305.90), bad coffee nerves (292.89), inability to sleep after drinking too much coffee (292.89), and something that probably has something to do with coffee, though the therapist can’t put his finger on it (292.9); shyness (299.80), (also known as Asperger’s Disorder); sleepwalking (307.46); jet lag (307.45); snobbery (301.7, a subset of Antisocial Personality Disorder); and insomnia (307.42); to say nothing of tobacco smoking, which includes both getting hooked (305.10) and going cold turkey (292.0). You were out of your mind the last time you have a nightmare (307.47). Clumsiness is now a mental illness (315.4). So is playing video games (Malingering, V65.2). So is doing just about anything “vigorously.” So, under certain circumstances, is falling asleep at night. The foregoing list is neither random nor trivial, nor does it represent the sort of editorial oversight that occurs when, say, an otherwise reputable zoology text contains the claim that goats breathe through their ears. We are here confronted with a worldview where everything is a symptom and the predominant color is a shade of therapeutic gray. This has the advantage of making the therapist’s job both remarkably simple and remarkably lucrative. |
L.J. Davies is the author of A Meaningful Life (1971). Read more about it over at The New York Times.
• Jun 03, 2010 link notes tagged: communication pathology symptom classification ressource taxonomy deranged therapy therapeutic psychiatry mind lost loser DSM diagnostic statistics manual disorder chaos order representation
| Why? and automatically answering, out of the blue, for no reason, just opening my mouth, words coming out, summarizing for the idiots: “Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I’m twenty‑seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh…” and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. |
More news about Bret Easton Ellis: a new novels, a film in production and maybe another one in the pipeline (an no, I’m not talking about Glamorama).
“Ellis speculated that Fox Searchlight might make his upcoming Hollywood novel Imperial Bedrooms (his seventh) into a film. […] Lunar Park is in pre-production, said Ellis; Jude Law may replace Benicio Del Toro, who Ellis knows and likes. He was set to play the role, but Ellis thought Del Toro was miscast. Ellis doesn’t see himself as Jude Law either.” (more)
• May 31, 2010 link notes tagged: art novel book author Easton Ellis chaos exit system closure end world uncertainty anxiety representation New York: Vintage Books
| I have registered the arbitrarities of Wilkins, of the unknown (or false) Chinese encyclopaedia writer and of the Bibliographic Institute of Brussels; it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is. “The world - David Hume writes - is perhaps the rudimentary sketch of a childish god, who left it half done, ashamed by his deficient work; it is created by a subordinate god, at whom the superior gods laugh; it is the confused production of a decrepit and retiring divinity, who has already died” (‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’, V. 1779). We are allowed to go further; we can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, it’s aim is not conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God. |
This very short essay contains the famous reference to the bizarre animal classification allegedly listed by an unknown Chinese encyclopedia. Learn more about the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’s taxonomy on Wikipedia.
The extent to which we do not understand very well what is taxonomy (we all experience certain difficulties when comes the time to classify things : think of your fridge for instance, or the desk you’re sitting at right now) certainly will be reflected in the ways bloggers are going to handle the new custom taxonomy user interface as well as custom post type capabilities within the upcoming WordPress 3.0. For a fun approach of the problems to come, read about Content Post Madness.
• May 29, 2010 link notes tagged: book author list encyclopedia order epistemology taxonomy classification chaos universe Borges animal God religion Hume
✖ Via The New York Times: “The Haunted Household” by Christoph Niemann, May 25, 2010
This is Niemann’s latest instalment published on his New York Times’ blog Abstract City :
“Maintaining a home is an uphill battle. For quite some time Iʼve suspected that little goblins are sabotaging my efforts. We try to keep our place tidy. I broom the floor, I sit back, relax and ponder my good work, yet … a few seconds later … ta-dah! One of those little beasts jumps out to mock me.” (more)
• May 29, 2010 link notes tagged: art design house home world order chaos monster representation
