Month: May 2018
nude
On the whole most of these drawings are executed with a hb pencil. This one is. Sometimes a 6b chunk of graphite.
from
sall greek ii
whereas no one in his right mind could truthfully say that he liked a vast edifice such as the Palace of Justice on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels. At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which is in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.
From ‘Austerlitz’ by W. G. Sebald.
Fascinating. Fascinating counterpoint to Keifer.
ridiculous
Something to Ridicule
by Yeun Mei trans. J. P. Seaton
Mencius tells us that Confucius, too,
like all the other men of Lu, fought for his share
of what was taken in the hunt: it was
the custom there. To keep oneself in cloisters just
to seek a name for uprightness…. that
lacks a certain dignity.
But getting learning, too, may be
but putting makeup on.
If one’s a whore at heart, he’s
sure to act the part.
sall greek
…how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on.
From ‘Austerlitz’ by W. G. Sebald
I am finding more n more to love in Sebald. Fascinating connections he makes. Beautiful complex patterns he develops.
A core string of poetry running through these first couple of chapters of ‘Austerlitz’ is the grotesque lens that Empirical thinking lends to history. Maybe some clarity. Consciousness possessed by empire.
face
Exhibiting
Makers’ Gallery Exhibition FINAL
Exhibiting with these marvelous people in June.
mangled
This photo does not quite do credit to how much the surface of the paper has been mangled by my pencil.
I could not resist having a play with the compass (see previous posts) but those clean lines leave me feeling queasy.
data
But then the algorithms have to maximize value from all the data that’s coming in. So they test use that data. And it just turns out as a matter of course, that the same data that is a positive, constructive process for the people who generated it — Black Lives Matter, or the Arab Spring — can be used to irritate other groups. And unfortunately there’s this asymmetry in human emotions where the negative emotions of fear and hatred and paranoia and resentment come up faster, more cheaply, and they’re harder to dispel than the positive emotions. So what happens is, every time there’s some positive motion in these networks, the negative reaction is actually more powerful. So when you have a Black Lives Matter, the result of that is the empowerment of the worst racists and neo-Nazis in a way that hasn’t been seen in generations.
Jaron Lanier: http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/jaron-lanier-interview-on-what-went-wrong-with-the-internet.html
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