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Fío e tinta sobre papel
60 x 60 cm
Hilo y tinta sobre papel
60 x 60 cm
Thread and ink on paper
CGAC, Santiago de Compostela
I can't say with certainty but I'm pretty sure this is the elusive snowball tree. I had no idea they grew on little trees like this but apparently this is where snowballs come from.
-30-
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October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
There can be a learning curve to #selling online. It is a certainty that mistakes will be made. We all make them, and we all learn from them. But, one of the most important things you can do to avoid daily headaches is to streamline your shipping process and make sure you always have the proper shipping supplies on hand.
Following are 10 great tips to keep shipping at the bottom of the list of things you have to worry about.
Have a dedicated #shipping area. If you already have your workspace set up for shipping it will be much less stressful when multiple orders come in at one time.
Keep necessary tools on hand. This will include:
•Measuring tape
•Postage scale
•Box knife
•Package tape and labels
•Markers, ink pens, and card stock or note cards
•Packaging paper and protective wrap
•Any labels, cards, or other supplies specific to your brand
Use online #postage calculators. The United States Postal Service (USPS.com) has an area on their website to calculate postage fees. You can simply put in a packages weight, dimensions, and destination zip code, and it will tell you exactly how much it will cost to ship.
Purchase a postage scale. If you have dedicated yourself to having an online business, invest in omething that will simplify the process and save you time. Other types of scales that are not designed specifically for packages can be inaccurate and cost you time, and additional fees in returned packages.
Ask for advice from a similar merchant. Most people working in online #businesses are happy to iscuss their business practices, and shipping shortcuts with their fellow colleagues.
Offer free shipping. Free shipping is a great way to lure customers. The idea of paying $25 for an item with free shipping, is much nicer to most people than an item for $20 plus $5 shipping, even though the cost is exactly the same. The perception of getting something for nothing is a great motivator to buy. Just build the cost into the price of whatever you are selling.
Flat-rate shipping is your friend. If you do decide to charge for shipping, let customers know how many of a particular item will fit in a box, and let them know there is one fee for shipping up to X amount of items. Again, the perception of getting something for nothing can motivate them to buy as many items as they can for one shipping fee.
Have concise shipping policies. It is important when writing your shipping policies to make sure that you are protected, but, you will want to keep your policies as short and direct as possible to ensure that they are actually read, and understood.
Understand #International Shipping. Most destinations outside of the US will charge custom fees. Make sure your customers know that they are responsible for any customs fees related to their shipment. If you do not specify this, it is likely that an unhappy customer will expect you to reimburse them for their customs fees. And, don’t forget that it is against the law to mark a purchased good as a gift to avoid customs fees. Don’t let a buyer convince you into doing so.
Include #insurance for higher price items. If a package does not arrive, as the business owner you are responsible for replacing it, and making sure that your customer is taken care of. Include insurance fees in your shipping prices, or build it into your product price if you are offering free shipping.
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
We're all running around in certainty of who we are now and how we're seen. Proper faces and little scars. We hide what we fear and we flaunt what we are. But what we were, what we were, it's gone now. What we were.
CERTAINTY ► Motivational Video ᴴᴰ LINK : youtu.be/6rvqmqw9UM0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BILLIONAIRE MINDSET - Motivational Video (from the great achievers of the world) This might be the best motivational video for someone going through a breakup! THE MINDSET BEHIND SUCCESS - Motivational Video " The Power Of Belief " Mindset and Success MINDSET FOR SUCCESS - Motivational Video 2016 Mindset the new Psychology of success - Great Video to Motivate YOU CEO Mindset - Top Billionaires - Best Motivational Video 2016 !!! Motivational Video - Immortal El Poder de la Pasión Motivational Video • Alone Motivation For Life - Motivational Videos ( Channel ) UNCOMMON MAN - Motivational Video 2016 FOCUS ON YOU - Motivation For Life - 2016 IMMORTAL ► Motivational Video 2016 ᴴᴰ The Power Of Positive Thinking - Inspirational Video 2016 THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY - Motivational Video 2016 motivational videos for success in life, break up motivation, breakup motivation, study motivation, motivation to study, motivational break up, eric thomas focus, focus motivation, mindset motivation, motivational speech for success in life, motivational speech 2016, break up motivational speech, motivation to study hard, motivational speech after break up, break up motivational video, mindset for success, joel osteen motivational speech, motivational speech break up, motivation after break up, et motivation, success mindset, motivational video, workout motivational speech, motivation heartbroken, fitness motivation speech, workout motivation speech, gym motivation speech, motivation study, heartbroken motivational, discipline motivation, motivational speech, motivational video, motivation kelly rowland, motivational videos for success in life, motivational songs, motivational speech for success in life, motivational speaker, motivational speeches for athletes, motivation music, motivation video, motivation song, motivation workout, motivation to study, motivation for students, motivation ti, motivation 2015, motivation arnold schwarzenegger, motivation and emotion , motivation at work , motivation and inspiration, motivation animation, motivational amv, motivation audio, motivation after break up, motivation athletes, motivation about life, a motivational video, a motivational speech, a motivational song, a motivational video for students, a motivational story, a motivational video never give up, a motivational speech on ending poverty, a motivational movie, a dream motivational, motivation bodybuilding, motivation by kelly rowland, motivation boxing, motivation business, motivation bodybuilding 2015, motivation become a lion, motivation baseball, motivation beat, motivation believe in yourself, motivation best,lil b motivation, motivational songs, lil b motivation instrumental, motivational songs 2014, lil b motivational speech, doe b motivation, motivational music, motivation, lil b motivation remix, b.o.b motivation, motivation compilation, motivation choreography, motivation change, motivation commercial, motivation compilation 2015, motivation clams casino, motivation confidence, motivation ct fletcher, motivation clean, motivation crossfit, c t fletcher motivation, c.ronaldo motivation, c.ronaldo motivational video, warrior motivation c, motivation dream, motivation dubstep, motivation depression, motivation don't give up, motivation don't quit, motivation documentary, motivation darkness, motivation desire, motivation dc young fly, motivation dance, d rose motivational video,d rose motivation, d wade motivation, motivation d, motivation dj mike d, basketball motivation d rose, motivational mr d, motivation entretien d'embauche, motivation d'avant match, motivation d'un coach, motivation eric thomas, motivation excuses, motivation eric thomas how bad do you want it, motivation et, motivation entrepreneur, motivation exercise, motivation education, motivation elliot hulse, motivation epic, motivation eric thomas breathe, e motivational speaker, e t motivational speaker, e thomas motivation, e t motivation, e 60 motivation, e-sports motivation, motivation football, motivation for studying, motivation for school, motivation for working out, motivation fear, motivation for life, motivation fitness, motivation for kids, motivation for teachers, motivational videos f, motivational speech f, motivational music f, motivation f, motivational songs f, motivation gym, motivationgrid, motivation grind, motivation gym music, motivation greg plitt, motivation gym workout, motivation guru, motivation get up, motivation goals, motivation get over depression, vince g motivation, chill rob g motivation, bboy lil g motivation, motivation how bad do you want it, hard work, motivation hard times, motivation hip hop, motivation hour, motivation how great i am, motivation hindi, motivation hunger, motivation heartbroken, motivation hero, triple h motivation, youtu.be/6rvqmqw9UM0
1. 19/52: In Disguise, 2. 12/52: Up The Bokeh Hill, 3. GOD, Let Me Fall Again And Not Hurt..., 4. 11/52: Bass Lines And Heartbeats, 5. 10/52: It Rained On Her Birthday Today, 6. 09/52: Photos and an Invitation, 7. "China and the United States are different in their stages of development, national conditions and historic footprints...", 8. "We cannot predict with certainty what the future will bring, but we can be certain about the issues that will define our times.",
9. 07/52: Tousle Me, Please... (photo featured in eXaminer), 10. Did You Miss Me, Flickr?, 11. 04/52: The Photographic Writer, 12. Above Descanso, 13. 03/52: Goodnight, Flickr!, 14. A Flower For MJ, 15. For You, Dad..., 16. 02/52: I Don't Ask Why,
17. Two And Two, 18. To Walk Away . . . Blue..., 19. Home Is Where My Summer Is, 20. La Jolla Cove, 21. 1/52: Painted With Flowers, 22. Dip It, Baby., 23. She Speaks Flowers, 24. Textured Bicycle,
25. So, forget the bad economy. Let's all be happy we're alive! And believe - "There's a light that hangs from heaven.", 26. A Couple Of Bokeh, 27. Let's Stop The World, 28. "In the garden, my soul is sunshine.", 29. "A child's smile is one of life's greatest blessings.", 30. Grauman's Against Blue, 31. Just Title Me, Please... =), 32. Glowing In Gray,
33. Domesticated, 34. Towards The Sun, 35. That Bicycle, 36. "I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.", 37. When people think you're smart, you're not supposed to make any mistake. If you do, it's carelessness and unacceptable. I think this is unfair. You're just smart, not perfect!, 38. Artist In Frustration, 39. "A daughter is a little girl who grows up to be a friend.", 40. They say, "Time flies when you're having fun." But I stay young when I play with my little one.,
41. Bokehlicious Sophiakeh, 42. Bokehful Abstraction, 43. Mother To Her Child, 44. Kids - Hows many times will they have to get sick before they turn into healthy grown-ups?, 45. Taxi Stop, 46. Nothing comes purer than a kiss from a child's lips to her mother's. It is the sweetest bonding, a reconnection after birth., 47. Word Play On Staples Center, 48. "The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.",
49. "Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with vision is making a positive difference.", 50. Cinc-flu de Mayo, 51. Magic Above The Blue, 52. My Bokeh Moon Has Risen, 53. Rose Among The Flowers, 54. "Do not judge or you, too, will be judged...", 55. Mary Rose on Matrix Star, 56. We Let The Light Through,
57. Bokeh Illumination, 58. She's (NOT) Egg-Ok! :), 59. "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness...", 60. My Little Pink Polka Dot Riding Hood, 61. "Where flowers bloom so does hope.", 62. "You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.", 63. "This solitary Tree!", 64. Chill'a At The Villa,
65. Purple Reigns, 66. Celestial Toy, 67. Too Close, 68. It's Sophia's Turn To Play, 69. "A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.", 70. “May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light. May good luck pursue you each morning and night.”, 71. Title?, 72. You take a picture without feelings. Then during post-process, two things are being developed - your photograph and your emotion.
Created with fd's Flickr Toys
data form exercise for visible certainty 2011
university of wisconsin-milwaukee
school of architecture and urban planning
chris t cornelius, associate professor
Working hard comes naturally to me. Even at that, slaving like a hamster on a wheel took some time to perfect. I took the bait though, hook, line, and bonus check.
In the first twelve months of my employment I proved one thing with absolute certainty. I had no idea how to say "no" when asked to take on a project. This characteristic alone rendered me ripe for the plucking when a management position became available, and I grabbed the ball as soon as it was tossed in my direction.
Every day I rolled up my sleeves and set about the business of leading my team in resolving the issues that prevented emergency room physicians from being paid by insurance companies. I stepped right into the ring and took on the fight while collecting a large salary increase, an annual bonus check, a nice office, and an extra week of vacation every year as my prize. Yep, this was living and I had worked hard earning every perk.
Fast-forward nine years.
"When are you going to finish?" My husband Joe grumbled as he climbed into bed, navigating around a sleeping dog and an ocean of paperwork.
"In a few minutes," I replied.
My track record offered Joe little reason to believe me. Finishing was always just a moment or two away. Then after I knew he was sound asleep, I'd gather my paperwork and move to the kitchen table and work for a few more hours. Later I'd crawl into bed exhausted, knowing that in five or six hours the curtain would rise again on the three-ring circus of stress I called my career.
Somewhere along the way, amid a string of successful insurance appeals, employees that competed for a spot on my team, and a senior management lineup that truly appreciated my efforts, my enthusiasm for living was replaced with grinding drudgery that robbed me of both peace and pleasure. As the company expanded, so did my client base, and with it the chains of responsibility that shackled me to my work grew heavier every day.
One night in particular I remember pulling the covers up to my chin and whispering into the darkness, "Please God, help me find the path back to peace and happiness."
The next morning as I drove to the office, I wondered how long it would take me to gather my courage and resign. Resigning would end the madness and Joe encouraged me to do so daily.
"Just do it A. Quit. We'll make do and you'll find another job. You're heading for a breakdown."
Resign, resign, resign! Not now though, I had a client presentation to prepare for and a conference call to attend in about an hour. Later, later, later!
Then an incoming e-mail bubble bounced across my computer screen and the phrase "position available" caught my eye. When I opened it the words "administrative assistant for senior vice president" glowed like a neon sign. Nah, I thought. They'd think I was crazy. Who in their right mind would step back to a secretarial position from a management position?
At home that evening my interest in the job persisted. I had ten years of experience as an executive secretary long before I ever arrived at the company. They didn't know that, but I did, and I knew how much I loved it too.
The next morning I summoned the nerve and told my boss I intended to apply for the job.
"You're in for a huge salary cut, and you'll lose your bonus, not to mention you'll be bored out of your mind," he said. "You're a leader, A., not a follower. How is it you think this makes any kind of sense?"
"Well," I said. "I imagine it makes no sense at all from your point of view but from where I'm sitting I have a few choices to make. I can choose to give up on this company and resign, or I can look at this secretarial position as an opportunity and try it. If it's not right for me, I'll resign and find something else."
"You're crazy."
"Not yet," I said. "But if I stay in this position much longer, I'm pretty sure I'll end up that way."
Admittedly the manger of human resources was stunned too, but from a budgetary standpoint it's hard to say no to someone who's asking for a salary cut and a decrease in benefits. That's pretty much a novelty you don't run into every day.
I brought to the table a skill set that boasted nine years of in-house experience, which included a working knowledge of every department in the operations area of the company.
Though I negotiated to a salary I felt was reasonable for what I was offering, the lost bonus and salary cut brought me to a twenty percent decrease in my income, not including the vacation time I surrendered. Even I was starting to think I had lost my mind.
I closed the door to my office that last day with very few regrets about leaving my management position, but with one whopping load of anxiety about whether I made a mistake taking a job that would look like a demotion. By the end of my first day in the new position I knew I had made the right decision.
No office, staff, salary, or bonus check can ever replace this new feeling of waking up every morning and actually wanting to go to work. I enjoy that pleasure every day. The tasks I perform and the responsibilities I manage aid one vice president in particular and add to the smooth running of the department in which I work.
When I leave at the end of the day, I take nothing with me but my desire to come back tomorrow knowing that I am respected and appreciated for the contribution that I make.
A. B. T.
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
If the destructive certainty of future pandemics were widely enough recognized maybe the U.S. federal government would include a separate well funded research department dedicated to building new defences against waves of constantly evolving diseases, something like a Pandemic Defence Department. Then maybe the politicians and the general public wouldn’t be caught so ignorant, surprised, and unprepared by the next inevitable scourge. The cost of developing effective new antibiotics and vaccines is too high to expect private pharmaceutical companies to invest billions that they might not be able to recover.
This page was copied from the c2017 Kindle edition.
Onufri or Onouphrios of Neokastro (Greek: Ονούφριος) was a 16th century icon painter active in Central and Southern Albania and South-western Macedonia. His works are characterized by post-Byzantine and Venetian influences. He also painted portraits, landscapes and churches.
Little is known with certainty about Onufri's life and his existence only emerged in the early 20th century. Regarding his birthplace only an inscription in the Holy Apostles church, near Kastoria has survived. Onufri is believed to have been born in the early 16th century either in the region of Berat (in today's Albania) or near Kastoria or Grevena (in today's northern Greece), while his ethnic background, whether Albanian or Greek, is disputed among scholars. The epithet Argitis, which appears in a fresco near Kastoria may point to Argos (southern Greece) as his place of birth, although as he used it only once it is regarded probable that it refers to a location in the area of Kastoria. In the climate of the time, the painting of Christian icons can be seen as an act to restore pre-Ottoman culture. He was active in Berat and possibly Venice until 1547. Then he worked in both Berat and Kastoria and in 1555, in Shelcan near Elbasan. He may have also been the painter of various murals in the church of St. Nicholas near Prilep(Republic of Macedonia). After 1554, he lived and painted in the village of Valsh. His works were signed with the title "Protopapas" (Greek: Πρωτόπαππας), demonstrating a senior position in the church hierarchy.
Onufri introduced greater realism and individuality into facial expressions, breaking with the strict conventions of the time. He was the first to introduce the colour pink into icon painting. The secret of this colour was not passed on and died with him. His work is noted for the intense use of colours and the use of natural dyes. According to Georgios Golobias the works of Onufri were significantly influenced by western art, as a result of his possible stay in Venice, being a member of the local Greek fraternity. On the other hand, Manolis Chatzidakis claims that western traces are few and they can be explained due to the contact with the paintings of the Cretan School.
Onufri founded a school of painting in Berat, which was passed on to his son Nikolla, upon his death, and by Onouphrios Cypriotes and Kostandin Shpataraku.
Many of his paintings are stored and displayed at the Onufri Iconographic Museum in a former church in the old town of Berat.
(Wikipedia)
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever (Isaaih 40:7)
The people who are to receive this news are like “grass” and “the flower” (vv. 7, 8). One withers, and the other fades. But in “the word of our God” confidence can be maintained, for his word “will stand forever” (v. 8). Our comfort rests not in the consistency of human leaders, even ecclesial ones, but in the certainty of the divine word.
Here the “word of God” is spoken, but with the coming of the Messiah, the Word is made flesh. He will come as a shepherd who “will gather the lambs in his arms,” carrying them “in his bosom” as a loving Lord (v. 11) despite his great power (see vv. 12–17). Jesus self-identifies with this portrait, describing himself as the “good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:1–18). The Messiah will face a withering, even unto death, but this incarnate Word, with power beyond this world, overcomes death and sin, rising from the grave and making it certain that God’s Word will never die and can be trusted unto death. The apostle Peter even describes the unfading word of God of Isaiah 40:8 as the gospel message itself (1 Pet. 1:25). - ESV Gospel Transformation Bible
This goose preened for a good fifteen minutes before I got bored and walked away. I think this is a Taverner's Cackling Goose. I say this with no certainty. www.sibleyguides.com/2007/07/identification-of-cackling-a...
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
Scientific Name: Stereum hirsutum
Common Name: Hairy Parchment
Certainty: pretty close (notes)
Location: Appalachians; Smokies; CabinCove
Date: 20071119
bo-kaap, cape town, western cape- kramat of tuan sayeed alawie, in the tana baru cemetery
It is this extraordinary man, who after a prison sentence of 12 years could forgive his goaler and help him keep law and order in the very city to which he was banished. Such a man was Tuan Sayed Alawi. He became a policeman in Cape Town. He obviously had a motive in becoming a policeman. The job gave him access to the slaves, and hence an opportunity to teach them Islam.
Tuan Sayed Alawi was a citizen of Mocca in Yemen, the southern portion of the Arbian peninsula. There is no certainty as to whether he was brought here directly from Mocca, or from Indonesia where he was a missionary. Nonetheless, he and a fellow prisoner, Haji Matarism arrived at the Cape in 1744. They were classified as Mohammedaansche Priesters, who had to be kept in chains for the rest of their lives.
When Tuan Sayed Alawi died in 1803, he was buried in the Muslim cemetery at the top end of Longmarket Street. Those who loved him erected around his grave a simple wall. It was a structure very much Cape in origin, but symbolical of the simplicity of his life. The tombstone of Robben Island slate was wrapped with white cloth, stained with the oils of the atars and other scents which his devoted followers sprinkled on it.
*************
A Kramat is a shrine or mausoleum that has been built over the burial place of a Muslim who's particular piety and practice of the teachings of Islam is recognised by the community. I have been engaged in documenting these sites around Cape Town over several visits at different times over the last few years. They range widely from graves marked by an edge of stones to more elaborate tombs sheltered by buildings of various styles. They are cultural markers that speak of a culture was shaped by life at the Cape and that infuses Cape Town at large.
In my searches used the guide put out by the Cape Masaar Society as a basic guide to locate some recognised sites. Even so some were not that easy to find.
In the context of the Muslims at the Cape, historically the kramats represented places of focus for the faithful and were/are often places of local pilgrimage. When the Dutch and the VOC (United East India Company aka Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) set up a refuelling station and a settlement at the Cape, Muslims from their territories in the East Indies and Batavia were with them from the start as soldiers, slaves and “Vryswarten" (freemen). As the settlement established itself as a colony the Cape became a useful place to banish political opponents from the heart of their eastern empire. Some exiles were of royal lineage and there were also scholars amongst them. One of the most well known of these exiles was Sheik Yusuf who was cordially received by Govenor van der Stel as befitted his rank (he and his entourage where eventually housed on an estate away from the main settlement so that he was less likely to have an influence over the local population), others were imprisoned for a time both in Cape Town and on Robben island. It is said that the first Koran in the Cape was first written out from memory by Sheik Yusuf after his arrival. There were several Islamic scholars in his retinue and these men encouraged something of an Islamic revival amoung the isolated community. Their influence over the enslaved “Malay” population who were already nominally Muslim was considerable and through the ministrations of other teachers to the underclasses the influence of Islam became quite marked. As political opponents to the governing powers the teachers became focus points for escaped slaves in the outlying areas.
Under the VOC it was forbidden to practice any other faith other than Christianity in public which meant that there was no provision for mosques or madrasas. The faith was maintained informally until the end of the C18th when plans were made for the first mosque and promises of land to be granted for a specific burial ground in the Bo Kaap were given in negotiations for support against an imminent British invasion. These promises were honoured by the British after their victory.
There is talk of a prophecy of a protective circle of Islam that would surround Cape Town. I cannot find the specifics of this prophecy but the 27 kramats of the “Auliyah” or friends of Allah, as these honoured individuals are known, do form a loose circle of saints. Some of the Auliyah are credited with miraculous powers in legends that speak of their life and works. Within the folk tradition some are believed to be able to intercede on behalf of supplicants (even though this more part of a mystical philosophy (keramat) and is not strictly accepted in mainstream contemporary Islamic teaching) and even today some visitors may offer special prayers at their grave sites in much the same way as Christians might direct prayer at the shrine of a particular saint.
data form exercise for visible certainty 2013
university of wisconsin-milwaukee
school of architecture and urban planning
chris t cornelius, associate professor
*Copyright © 2012 Lélia Valduga, all rights reserved.
Briefly, a little silence, a few gestures, but mainly the sincerity in his eyes! That's what makes children angels land!
8/365
Self-portrait.
You're roused from your sleep by the nagging certainty in the back of your mind that your alarm hasn't gone off and it's already time for you to leave for work. You wrench yourself out of your dreams and, in an almost involuntary action, sit bolt upright in panic. You're late for work!!!
Except... no, you're not, because it's still dark and when you reach over to the (at least usually accurate) alarm clock it says it's just after four in the morning.
This has got to stop.
------
When I started doing mornings at the cafe I used to work at, I was a nervous wreck. The first few mornings I would wake just before my alarm went off, because all my mind was thinking the entire night was "Ican'tbelateIcan'tbelateIcan'tbelate". The next morning, I woke up at 6.30. Then 5am. Then a little before four in the morning.
There is something MISSING from this photo, and I can't put my finger on what it is. If you can, please tell me, it's driving me crazy!! Today's shot actually ended up being the opposite of yesterday's; I meant for it to be a bit serious, but with the title I think it ends up being kind of humorous!
"I do not know what to do with my life"
"I do not know what to do with my life"
Is it wise for a person to seek the true purpose of life? No, of course, since this purpose is already known with certainty. The general principle is that, since there is life beyond the grave, the purpose of life, without exception, must be there and not here. Everyone knows this, but, unfortunately, few remember it. So you make it a rule in your life: Pursue this goal with all your might. You will then see what light will shine on your short earthly paradigm and on your works.
First of all, you will realize that in this world there are only means for that other life. All the temporary are means to the conquest of eternity. All you have to do is use them in such a way that they lead you to this goal; that they do not turn you away from it and that you do not oppose it. So here is the answer to your question, "I do not know what to do with my life." What to do; Look at the sky and measure every step of your life, so that it is a step towards the sky. The rule is so simple and at the same time so comprehensive! You ask: "Shouldn't I do something?", And of course I should. Do what the circumstances of your circle and your work demand each time, believing that this is - and should be - your duty. You are not asked for anything more. It is a great mistake to think that you have to undertake great and great struggles either for heaven or, as the modernists say, for the good of humanity. This is not necessary at all. All that is necessary is to do everything according to God's commands. And when I say everything, I mean what is presented in your daily life. Nothing else. God cares for every human being. He is the one who causes or concedes what happens to us. His omnipotent providence embraces not only the general course of our lives, but every moment and every circumstance.
Let us take an example: A poor man is approaching you. God has sent him. What should you do? Help him. So the Lord is watching you to see if you will act according to His will. If you help the poor, He will be pleased and you will have taken a step towards your ultimate goal, eternal life.
I do not need to use another example, because I am sure you understood what I mean: In every circumstance, without exception, do what God wants. As for what he wants, you know it from the orders he has given us. Does anyone need your help? Help him. Did anyone insult you? Forgive him. Did you offend anyone? I ran to apologize to him and reconcile with him. Did anyone praise you? Do not be proud. Did anyone fight you? Do not be angry. Is it time for prayer? Pray. Is it time for work? Work… If you act in this way in every situation, that is, if everything you do is in accordance with God's commands, then all the problems in your life will be solved.
Our purpose is the blissful life after death. The means, I repeat, for achieving the goal are the divine works. The issue is, I think, simple and clear. There is no reason to torment yourself with complex questions and difficult problems. Get rid of any thoughts of "social", "mass", "universal" action, as modernists say, and then you will peacefully reach your ultimate goal without obstacles. Remember that the Lord does not forget a single glass of cold water, offered to someone thirsty.
"Nevertheless," you will tell me, "it is necessary to choose and determine a way of life!" How will she define him, right? He will start thinking, thinking… until he is dizzy! And where will it end up? Rather in confusion and impasse. The best and safest of all is to accept with obedience, gratitude and love what God determines for you. And what God determines for each of us is revealed in the circumstances and circumstances of our lives. Take your case. For the time being you are under the protection of your parents. What better would you like? You have warmth, security, carefree. Live in these conditions, consciously doing what the circumstances demand each time, and do not let your thoughts fly away.
"But it is impossible for me to remain in this state forever," you will say again. "Someday I will have to take my own path. What will I do then? Can I not think about it? The best thing to do is to leave yourself in the hands of God, to pray, asking Him to put you on the path that He considers best for you, and to wait patiently for the time when He will speak to you, He will speak to you. from the facts. So, after you find peace, leaning on God, live simply, without making big and futile plans. Your daily activities and relationships with people do not need to change. Do not think that such a simple life has no meaning or value. Whatever one does on earth, big or small, important or insignificant, is a task. And if a work is in accordance with the divine commands, then it is also pleasing to the Lord. Well, every work pleasing to the Lord has invaluable and eternal value, no matter how simple or insignificant it may seem
Kenny Scharf shared about his vision and mission as a pop surrealist at the "Tuesday Evenings" lecture series at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (www.http://themodern.org/). His artistic mindset started early in life when he was "very much influenced" by his Los Angeles surroundings where the space-age prospect of the Jetsons's seemed a future certainty. "It was a time filled with fantasy, and I clicked on that fantasy." Even though the starry-eyed romance of space travel was dashed by the harsh reality of the 70s, Scharf never let it stray far from his artistic orbit. "The fantasy of space travel had left, but I wanted to keep it going." Visit his website and social media channels via the links below to witness Sharf's consistent relaunching of the space theme.
Another concept Scharf unpacked was "customization." The idea is to bring art into real life by adding it to everyday household objects (e.g., a vacuum cleaner). Scharf framed his mission to "get art out into everyday life" in the spirit of ancient cultures, such as the Greeks, who decorated everyday objects such as urns. The most visible expressions of Scharf's customization are the 100+ "car bombs" he has painted during the past year and a half. See his Instagram link below for more on how he turns autos into mobile canvases. Kids are more likely to notice these mobile paintings, Scharf stated, which is a strong reason for funding art education in schools. "Adults don't see things, but kids do." (See www.flickr.com/photos/75403842@N08/15470257330/ for a "car bomb" Scharf did while in Fort Worth).
Oh, about this photo...I took only a small baby step by using my phone to add artistic elements that could be in the spirit of a Kenny Scharf work...with none of the artistic talent, of course. I added the spirals, a life-long fascination for Kenny, who sees them as "powerful and important symbols" that serve as portals "to get to another world."
Learn More About:
Tuesday Evenings at the Modern
www.themodern.org/programs/category/Tuesday-Evenings-at-t....
Kenny Scharf's Presentation
www.themodern.org/programs/Upcoming/Kenny-Scharf/2751
Kenny Scharf:
www.youtube.com/channel/UC250QSEZmU4ef2yEbdRz9Dg
This photo is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
Digital
"OCD tricks us into believing certainty is possible. In reality, certainty is found at the bottom of a bottomless pit or deep inside a black hole, always sucking us in."
For hundreds of years, the church of Saint Spyridon the Old continues to beautify, through its discreet presence, the life of Bucharesters.
Although its founders and the year of construction are not known with certainty, and its religious architecture does not attract the attention of those who love beauty in any special way, the place of worship impresses with its authenticity and simplicity.
Some historical writings mention as founders the Florești boyars, "old-line and generous boyars", whose sumptuous residence was located nearby, in the former neighborhood of "Scorțarului", most likely named after those who processed tree bark, indispensable to tanners.
It is also known that during the reign of Prince Constantin Mavrocordat, the small wooden church was replaced with another one made of stone, surrounded by cells, the religious establishment soon becoming a monastery.
In addition to the significant financial contribution of Prince Mavrocordat, Patriarch Silvestru of Antioch was also a co-founder.
Also during this time, as in the case of other places of worship in Bucharest, an inn was built around the monastery, but it was demolished with the start of the Dâmbovița sewerage works.
Over time, other buildings were erected on the site of the inn, among the most famous being the "Tyre Society", later transformed into a theater, which following renovation works became the "Operetta Theater".
In 1815, during the terrible plague epidemic during the reign of Prince Caragea, the Bucharesters who had not left the Capital, in order not to infect each other, closed themselves in monasteries, including "St. Spiridon the Old".
In the 19th century, the church suffered significant damage due to the earthquakes of 1802 and 1838, then the reform of the secularization of the monastery's assets, initiated by Prince Cuza, left it terribly impoverished.
During the communist regime, in 1987, it was demolished, and was not rebuilt until 1995.
A year later, on the occasion of its consecration, on Saint Demetrius' day, on October 26, the two inscriptions in Greek and Arabic, unique in the church world, the entrance portico, the carved stone columns inside and on the porch, the window frames, as well as the icons in the iconostasis were re-installed in their place.
Photo showing Alistair McClymont (UK) and his installation "The Limitations of Logic and the Absence of Absolute Certainty"
Credit: tom mesic
A comprehensive and competitive income tax applicable to the LNG industry gives proponents the certainty they need to make investment decisions while ensuring British Columbians receive the revenues they deserve from this new industry, Finance Minister Michael de Jong said with the introduction of Bill 6, the Liquefied Natural Gas Income Tax Act in the BC legislature today.
The LNG Income Tax framework reflects government’s announcement in February 2014 and government’s ongoing consultation with industry.
READ MORE: www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2014/10/lng-income-tax-ensures-fai...
I think this was an strip called Fashion Street, but cannot recall with certainty. This mother, daughter and dog (well, the mom and kid at least) are what I'd typically call fashion victims. They were lovely and dressed to the nines, but not sure in any practical sense. The mom is pushing a baby buggy type stroller, but it is obviously intended for the dog. In case poor Poopsie gets tired. The daughter is desperately trying to keep up with mom as she is rushing somewhere. The daughters heeled boots made keeping up a struggle. Frankly, I think her kid will get tired before Poopsie, but I am guessing Poopsie comes first in the pecking order. *No, I don't know the dogs real name.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Honeymoon
October 2006
Scientific Name: Calocera cornea
Common Name: Yellow Tuning-Fork
Certainty: not sure (notes)
Location: Southern Appalachians; Smokies; CabinCove
Date: 20060715
I think I have the ID wrong, but they sure are photogenic, aren't they?
Photo showing Alistair McClymont (UK) and his installation "The Limitations of Logic and the Absence of Absolute Certainty"
Credit: tom mesic
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
Scientific Name: Aspicilia cinerea (L.) Korber
Common Name: Cinder Lichen
Certainty: positive (notes)
Location: Canadian Rockies; Wells Gray Provincial Park; Edgewood Blue
Date: 20080415
This is what happens if you add KOH to an apothecial section while watching under the compound microscope. Out of seemingly nowhere all these cool red radiating needle-like crystals form. This is a reaction of the lichen substance norstictic acid with KOH.
Macroscopically, if you put a drop of KOH on the nice ashy-white surface, it also turns a very pleasing bright red. Always amusing, no matter how many times you see it!
Apparently, the shape of the crystal is diagnostic of the type of acid present. They will also show up nicely under cross-polarized light, but I'm not set up to get good photos of that yet.
What's not to love about a swamp? I do like a good swamp and there's plenty of them up here; some small, some hanging, and some like this one — Bogong Swamp — swamps of substance.
Bogong; now there's a peculiar word! There are multiple claims about which language group gave us the word. It is sufficient in the absence of a verifiable certainty that it pre-dates European adoption of the word and functioned as a noun; the name of a brown moth — Agrotis infusa. In common usage this is the Bogong moth.
Such was the significance of this moth that usage of the word bogong has resulted in unusual back formations to include a general usage for a place of high elevation — Bogong High Plains — and individual peaks: Grey Mare Bogong, Dicky Copper Bogong and so on.
Describing the view from behind Hospital Hill I mentioned the human migrations that used this terrain as ramps up to the high country to collect and feast on bogong moths. The moths had themselves flown south to these same high places to aestivate over summer after fattening on more northerly pastures. This behaviour was so ingrained as to become a defining term not just for the moth but the places.
Wait; no this isn't such a high place! Bogong Swamp is barely 1000m ASL; not high enough for the moths to aestivate and not equiped with the boulder fields and rock crevices they need. Instead I think we can look at how important the creek lines here were as pathways into the high places. Bogong Creek spreads out into and fills this swamp. What chance that the creek got its name from the human migration that followed its course? The rock shelter above this swamp has evidence of human occupation going back to 8000 years ago. There are others on this same trending axis to the north, through a gap in the terrain where the creek is now named Rendezvous Creek. I wonder what happened there and whether its rock shelter was occupied for a similar purpose? Oh, and the creek between them with its own rock shelter? That would be Middle Creek. There is a big body of evidence that this was a significant place, gathering and guiding peoples, funneling them upwards.
This traditional use, this behaviour, this habit was so important despite happening somewhere else as to gift the name of the moth through the European explorers and settlers, these intruders or invaders if you will, to geographical features in perpetuity. They were clearly quite in tune with this place, its culture, its people in a way we have mostly forgotten.
Now back to that swamp. It isn't an awful place; not a bog or morass. It works like the kidneys, like a bladder for the rain and the snow melt coming off those mountains. The flow spreads out and is slowed, sediments trapped, nutrients harvested, water absorbed. Instead of rushing off to the sea, even though it will drain into Australia's second longest river and take a couple of thousand kilometers to get there, it is held up to both nurture this place, but also slowly drain down to join and become the Gudgenby River. It feeds, nurtures and breeds a whole web of life.
Right here, right now it blocks my way. I don't resent that. I'll just move on to a place where it drains out into a creek, narrows and lets me jump across and on my way.
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects
The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.
Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.
Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.
Curated by Zsofia Jakab
Artists:
Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.
Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website
Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.
Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website
Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website
Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.
The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.
They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website
Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.
Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.
Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography
For hundreds of years, the church of Saint Spyridon the Old continues to beautify, through its discreet presence, the life of Bucharesters.
Although its founders and the year of construction are not known with certainty, and its religious architecture does not attract the attention of those who love beauty in any special way, the place of worship impresses with its authenticity and simplicity.
Some historical writings mention as founders the Florești boyars, "old-line and generous boyars", whose sumptuous residence was located nearby, in the former neighborhood of "Scorțarului", most likely named after those who processed tree bark, indispensable to tanners.
It is also known that during the reign of Prince Constantin Mavrocordat, the small wooden church was replaced with another one made of stone, surrounded by cells, the religious establishment soon becoming a monastery.
In addition to the significant financial contribution of Prince Mavrocordat, Patriarch Silvestru of Antioch was also a co-founder.
Also during this time, as in the case of other places of worship in Bucharest, an inn was built around the monastery, but it was demolished with the start of the Dâmbovița sewerage works.
Over time, other buildings were erected on the site of the inn, among the most famous being the "Tyre Society", later transformed into a theater, which following renovation works became the "Operetta Theater".
In 1815, during the terrible plague epidemic during the reign of Prince Caragea, the Bucharesters who had not left the Capital, in order not to infect each other, closed themselves in monasteries, including "St. Spiridon the Old".
In the 19th century, the church suffered significant damage due to the earthquakes of 1802 and 1838, then the reform of the secularization of the monastery's assets, initiated by Prince Cuza, left it terribly impoverished.
During the communist regime, in 1987, it was demolished, and was not rebuilt until 1995.
A year later, on the occasion of its consecration, on Saint Demetrius' day, on October 26, the two inscriptions in Greek and Arabic, unique in the church world, the entrance portico, the carved stone columns inside and on the porch, the window frames, as well as the icons in the iconostasis were re-installed in their place.