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If one looks closely amongst the gorgonians in the shallows of the Caribbean, one will regularly see these tiny oddities with what looks somewhat like hieroglyphs on them. About one inch long, this individual is actually a species of Cowrie called a FLAMINGO TONGUE. The colorful exterior is actually a thin fleshy mantle spread out over it's prized shell. If you look closely, you will see the thin border between the 4 sections.
Admittedly, I've read too much SCIENCE FICTION, and so my imagination compulsively leads me to ponder such things as: Is there a message to be gleaned from the spots/living hieroglyphs on the FLAMINGO TONGUE? Perhaps a simple intra-species message - VOULEZ VOUS COUCHEZ AVEC MOI, CE SOIR?? Perhaps something existentially profound? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head finding the MEANING OF LIFE scrawled across the mantles of FLAMINGO TONGUES?! (Cheers to Douglas Adams).
Thanks for reading and for viewing. Comment, fav, share and please check out my best photos … Mark
Visual Artist, Alberto Giacometti UK: 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.
Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work. Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealist influences in order to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions. Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries. His critical nature led to self-doubt about his own work and his self-perceived inability to do justice to his own artistic vision. His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life.
Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches). Their small size reflected the actual distance between the artist's position and his model. In this context he self-critically stated: "But wanting to create from memory what I had seen, to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller". After World War II, Giacometti created his most famous sculptures: his extremely tall and slender figurines. These sculptures were subject to his individual viewing experience—between an imaginary yet real, a tangible yet inaccessible space.
In Giacometti's whole body of work, his painting constitutes only a small part. After 1957, however, his figurative paintings were equally as present as his sculptures. His almost monochromatic paintings of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity
Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, Switzerland, the eldest of four children of Giovanni Giacometti, a well-known post-Impressionist painter, and Annetta Giacometti-Stampa. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition. Coming from an artistic background, he was interested in art from an early age. Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts. His brothers Diego (1902–1985) and Bruno (1907–2012) would go on to become artists and architects as well. Additionally, his cousin Zaccaria Giacometti, later professor of constitutional law and chancellor of the University of Zurich, grew up together with them, having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905.
In 1922, he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with Cubism and Surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading Surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Miró, Max Ernst, Picasso, Bror Hjorth, and Balthus.
Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. He preferred models he was close to—his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne (then known as Isabel Delmer). This was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated. Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife".
During World War II, Giacometti took refuge in Switzerland. There, in 1946, he met Annette Arm, a secretary for the Red Cross. They married in 1949.
After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. For the remainder of Giacometti's life, Annette was his main female model. His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated and severely attenuated, as the result of continuous reworking.
He frequently revisited his subjects: one of his favourite models was his younger brother Diego
In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square",[16] he "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper", according to his biographer James Lord.[17] Giacometti's work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV (1960). The commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project.
In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné, Giacometti – The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970), comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970.
In his later years Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he traveled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived.
Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease (pericarditis) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents.
With no children, Annette Giacometti became the sole holder of his property rights. She worked to collect a full listing of authenticated works by her late husband, gathering documentation on the location and manufacture of his works and working to fight the rising number of counterfeited works. When she died in 1993, the Fondation Giacometti was set up by the French state.
In May 2007 the executor of his widow's estate, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, who was also convicted. Both were ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation.
Born: 10 October 1901
Borgonovo, Stampa,Graubünden, Switzerland
Died: 11 January 1966 (aged 64) Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland
Orginal photo: Photograph by Ernst Scheidegger
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti
Artwork by TudioJepegii
No sooner had I made the trap for fruit flies, they started visiting. Little did they know.
Heh heh.
If you take enough pictures of the same thing, pretty soon looking at them leads to a brooding sense of existential despair and a level of energy that is equivalent to watching paint dry.....slowly dry. The only hope then is to fiddle faddle around with them. Actually, "fiddle faddle" is my Flickr friend Lynne's description of photo processing and I love it. This seashot image was arrived at after a little fiddling and faddling around. When I throw in "fun," I have a trifecta of pretty cool f-words and it is fun to fiddle faddle around.
Maybe Lynne will provide the "Urban Dictionary" definition for fiddle faddle. I think that this could be important. Honestly, I fiddle faddle with every image I post here. You know how it is--a little here and a little there, and pretty soon Marg's calling me to dinner--that's how they roll.
Have a great Saturday everyone.
Pebble Beach, San Mateo County, CA
I have some pens and pencils.
A sketchbook.
And a head full of quotes, lyrics and the like.
Come and see them at www.Quoteskine.co.uk
Note the rather bizarre existential advert for, of all the things, the AA Driving School.
Ashton, Wellington Road, 04/03/1995.
Walking on foot brings you down to the very stark, naked core of existence. We travel too much in airplanes and cars. It’s an existential quality that we are losing. It’s almost like a credo of religion that we should walk.
There is, of course, something inherently romantic—if not heroic—about the extreme solitary explorer enveloped by nature. The very image of Herzog on foot recalls the iconic 19th-century paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, especially his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with its lone figure staring out at the wide vista above the clouds.
'Truth itself wanders through the forests,' Herzog writes near the end. Yet here he embroiders his memories for effect: The vast swath of geography between Munich and Paris is littered with industrial towns and cities.
Once he comes out on the other end, traversing the deforested Champs-Élysées (“We were close to what they call the breath of danger”), Herzog emerges victorious.
― Of Walking in Ice: (Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974)
by Werner Herzog
Rovingian Council - Existential Dynamics - The Anthropocentric -Theocentric Conflict - The Animistic View as a Connector by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)
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Rovingian Council - The Existential Dynamics
1. The Anthropocentric-Theocentric Conflict
The anthropocentric-theocentric theory does not see man and God as mutually exclusive, but as forces in a permanent existential "tug-of-war":
The Dilemma: If man is the center (anthropocentrism), he claims agency and knowledge, but suffers from finitude and emptiness. If God is the center (theocentrism), there is order and purpose, but man becomes a mere plaything of fate or divine will.
The Tragedy: Tragedy emerges when these spheres collide. Man seeks divinity (Prometheus complex), but ends up punished by his biological and moral limitations.
2. The Animistic View as a Connector
Animism proposes that the distinction between "man," "nature," and "gods" It is fluid:
Everything is alive: Plants, animals, rivers, stones, and storms possess anima (soul). There is no distant God, but a spiritual presence in everything.
The Disenchantment of the World can be reversed: Modern man, by separating himself from the immanent universal sacred (animism) and focusing only on reason or a transcendent and distant God, has lost his vital connection with nature and the cosmos.
For many modern thinkers and ecologists, reversing this process to a Ecocentric View is not just a spiritual desire, but a necessity for survival.
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A Dinâmica Existencial
1. O Conflito Antropo-Teocêntrico
A teoria antropo-teocêntrica não vê homem e Deus como excludentes, mas como forças em permanente "cabo de guerra" existencial:
O Dilema: Se o homem é o centro (antropocentrismo), ele reivindica agência e ciência, mas sofre com a finitude e o vazio. Se Deus é o centro (teocentrismo), há ordem e propósito, mas o homem torna-se mero joguete do destino ou da vontade divina.
A Tragédia: A tragédia emerge quando essas esferas colidem. O homem busca a divindade (complexo de Prometeu), mas acaba punido por suas limitações biológicas e morais.
2. A Visão Animista como Conector
O animismo propõe que a distinção entre "homem", "natureza" e "deuses" é fluida:
Tudo é Vivo: Plantas, animais, rios, pedras e tempestades possuem anima (alma). Não há um Deus distante, mas uma presença espiritual em tudo.
O Desencantamento Do Mundo pode ser revertido : O Homem moderno ao separar o homem do sagrado imanente universal (animismo) e focar apenas na razão ou num Deus transcendente e distante, o ser humano perdeu a sua conexão vital com a natureza e o cosmos.
Para muitos pensadores e ecologistas modernos, a reversão desse processo para uma Visão Ecocêntrica não é apenas um desejo espiritual, mas uma necessidade de sobrevivência.
Rovingian Council - Diversity as a Universal Principle and Existential Spiritual Framework by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)
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Rovingian Council: Diversity as a Universal Principle and Existential Spiritual Framework
The Universe as a Laboratory of Diversity
When we observe the universe, we understand that existence is not marked by uniformity, but by difference. The true "norm" of life is the multiplicity of forms, phenomena, and experiences, making the cosmos a laboratory of infinite variations.
1. The Scale of Ignorance
- The Biological Abyss: The illusion of human dominion over the planet is confronted by our ignorance about most terrestrial life. It is estimated that we are unaware of between 80% and 90% of the species that inhabit the Earth, which demonstrates the limitation of our knowledge and the need for humility before nature. If we are not even able to fully understand what is close to us, the legitimacy of imposing rigid rules on what is considered "natural" becomes questionable.
- The Cosmos Revealed: In the cosmic realm, space missions like James Webb and Cassini reveal that the creativity of planetary chemistry and geology is comparable to that of biology. Discoveries such as methane oceans, icy moons, and diamond atmospheres further broaden our perception of universal diversity.
2. Human Diversity as an Extension of the Cosmos
For the Rovingian Council, the plurality of ethnicities, orientations, and cultures does not represent an obstacle, but the pinnacle of the health of any system. Just as diverse natural environments are more resilient, a plural humanity is intellectually and spiritually richer and more fertile.
Spirituality, in turn, must reflect this multiplicity. If consciousness is part of nature—and nature is diverse—the manifestations of the sacred must also be multiple, assuming different forms, rituals, and interpretations.
3. The Ethics of Non-Restriction
- The Fallacy of Uniformity: Restricting diversity is equivalent to trying to extinguish the very nature of consciousness. Political or religious systems that seek to standardize human behavior go against the creative entropy of the universe, sustaining the false idea that we all are or should be the same.
- The Freedom to Be as Resistance: The acceptance of diversity therefore becomes an act of resistance and alignment with universal laws. Being different does not represent a threat to order, but rather the fulfillment of natural order. Standardizing human beings, whether in racial, cultural, sexual, or spiritual terms, is not only a form of social and political oppression, but an attack against the very essence of the universe.
4. The Urgency Factor and the Risk of Triple Extinction
We live in a paradox: at the height of technical knowledge, we are also on the brink of an existential abyss. The same tools that expand our understanding of the cosmos are being used to accelerate processes that scientists and spiritual leaders recognize as a race against extinction.
The Risk of Triple Extinction
Species Diversity: Humanity faces mass extinction, with accelerated biodiversity loss converging all environmental crises.
Cultural and Spiritual Diversity: Ancestral knowledge and worldviews are disappearing under the pressure of a global monoculture, both technological and political.
Free Will and Human Nature: There is a risk of "value blocking" through technologies such as artificial intelligence and political pressures, crystallizing prejudices and limiting the ethical and spiritual evolution of humanity.
Final Reflection
This vision proposes that tolerance, understood as "bearing with the other," be superseded by celebration, which means "recognizing the need of the other." The Rovingian Council suggests an ecology of the spirit, where each individual variation is essential for the Whole to understand itself.
In this way, diversity ceases to be merely a social or political issue, becoming an ontological law that is part of the very structure of being and existence. By positioning diversity as a universal principle, the Rovingian Council proposes a robust ethical foundation: accepting the other is not a concession or a gesture of benevolence, but the recognition of a natural and fundamental truth.
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Conselho Rovingiano: Diversidade como Princípio Universal e Marco Espiritual Existencial
O Universo como Laboratório da Diversidade
Ao observarmos o universo, compreendemos que a existência não é marcada pela uniformidade, mas sim pela diferença. A verdadeira "norma" da vida é a multiplicidade de formas, fenômenos e experiências, tornando o cosmos um laboratório de infinitas variações.
1. A Escala da Ignorância
- O Abismo Biológico: A ilusão de domínio humano sobre o planeta é confrontada pela nossa ignorância acerca da maior parte da vida terrestre. Estima-se que desconhecemos entre 80% e 90% das espécies que habitam a Terra, o que demonstra a limitação do nosso conhecimento e a necessidade de humildade diante da natureza. Se nem mesmo somos capazes de compreender plenamente o que está próximo, torna-se questionável a legitimidade de impor regras rígidas sobre o que é considerado "natural".
- O Cosmos Revelado: No âmbito cósmico, missões espaciais como as da James Webb e da Cassini revelam que a criatividade da química e da geologia planetária é comparável à da biologia. Descobertas como oceanos de metano, luas de gelo e atmosferas de diamante ampliam ainda mais a nossa perceção da diversidade universal.
2. Diversidade Humana como Extensão do Cosmos
Para o Conselho Rovingiano, a pluralidade de etnias, orientações e culturas não representa um obstáculo, mas sim o ápice da saúde de qualquer sistema. Assim como ambientes naturais diversos são mais resilientes, uma humanidade plural é intelectualmente e espiritualmente mais rica e fértil.
A espiritualidade, por sua vez, deve refletir essa multiplicidade. Se a consciência é parte da natureza — e esta é diversa —, as manifestações do sagrado também devem ser múltiplas, assumindo diferentes formas, rituais e interpretações.
3. A Ética da Não-Restrição
- A Falácia da Uniformidade: Restringir a diversidade equivale a tentar extinguir a própria natureza da consciência. Sistemas políticos ou religiosos que buscam padronizar o comportamento humano vão contra a entropia criativa do universo, sustentando a falsa ideia de que todos somos ou devemos ser iguais.
- A Liberdade de Ser Como Resistência : A aceitação da diversidade torna-se, portanto, um ato de resistência e alinhamento com as leis universais. Ser diferente não representa uma ameaça à ordem, mas sim o cumprimento da ordem natural. Padronizar o ser humano, seja em termos raciais, culturais, sexuais ou espirituais, é não apenas uma forma de opressão social ou politica, mas um atentado contra a própria essência do universo.
4. O Fator Urgência e o Risco da Tripla Extinção
Vivemos um paradoxo: no auge do conhecimento técnico, estamos também à beira de um abismo existencial. As mesmas ferramentas que expandem nosso entendimento sobre o cosmos estão sendo usadas para acelerar processos que cientistas e líderes espirituais reconhecem como uma corrida contra a extinção.
O Risco da Tripla Extinção
Diversidade das Espécies: A humanidade enfrenta uma extinção em massa, com perda acelerada da biodiversidade, convergindo todas as crises ambientais.
Diversidade Cultural e Espiritual: Saberes ancestrais e visões de mundo estão desaparecendo sob a pressão de uma monocultura global, tanto tecnológica quanto política.
O Livre-Arbítrio e a Natureza Humana: Existe o risco do "bloqueio de valores" por meio de tecnologias como a inteligência artificial e de pressões políticas, cristalizando preconceitos e limitando a evolução ética e espiritual da humanidade.
Reflexão Final
Esta visão propõe que a tolerância, entendida como "suportar o outro", seja superada pela celebração, que significa "reconhecer a necessidade do outro". O Conselho Rovingiano sugere uma ecologia do espírito, onde cada variação individual é essencial para que o Todo compreenda a si mesmo.
Dessa forma, a diversidade deixa de ser apenas uma pauta social ou política, tornando-se uma lei ontológica que faz parte da própria estrutura do ser e da existência. Ao posicionar a diversidade como um princípio universal, o Conselho Rovingiano propõe uma base ética robusta: aceitar o outro não é uma concessão ou gesto de benevolência, mas o reconhecimento de uma verdade natural e fundamental.
"In that case, what is the question?" Gertrude Stein (3 February 1874 – 27 July 1946) These are her reported last words."
In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world
© BlueFunambulist 2014 | Spain.
Be.
Be what you were, fly over your old days, collect the precious knowledge they leave behind, get overwhelmed by the melancholy and get spotted by the emotional colours that you, unconciously, gave to them. Revive the memories of his light blue eyes on you and the green grass under your bodies. Revive the naivety of your first kiss, your pigtails and the smell of your first and sweet perfume. Revive the intense jolt of true love in your youth, the transition from girl to woman and the magnificient discovering of yourself while you were getting lost in between the trees of Sweden.
Be what you are, heart, mind and body. Feel. Feel the nature, feel the love, feel yourself.
Be what you will be and keep dreaming. Imagine freely, trust in the turnaround of the destiny and reset your ideas in order to adapt to the coming days, pursue your happiness and the others one and keep giving, keep being real and imaginary, keep feeling life.
Be you, be me, be yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Listening to: Constellations, Jack Johnson.
© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal. Please contact me if you wish to use/purchase this photo.
I was shy and already having existential questions! Lol! ;-)
Tagged by Celena/Pinkachan and Miriana.
Would you like to play?
“We’re existentially alone on the planet. I can’t know what you’re thinking and feeling and you can’t know what I’m thinking and feeling. And the very best works construct a bridge across that abyss of human loneliness.”
- David Foster Wallace -
Walking on foot brings you down to the very stark, naked core of existence. We travel too much in airplanes and cars. It’s an existential quality that we are losing. It’s almost like a credo of religion that we should walk.
There is, of course, something inherently romantic—if not heroic—about the extreme solitary explorer enveloped by nature. The very image of Herzog on foot recalls the iconic 19th-century paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, especially his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with its lone figure staring out at the wide vista above the clouds.
'Truth itself wanders through the forests,' Herzog writes near the end. Yet here he embroiders his memories for effect: The vast swath of geography between Munich and Paris is littered with industrial towns and cities.
Once he comes out on the other end, traversing the deforested Champs-Élysées (“We were close to what they call the breath of danger”), Herzog emerges victorious.
― Of Walking in Ice: (Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974)
by Werner Herzog
a diagram showing nietzsche's idea that what we do is "beyond good and evil"
for a book arts project with charts of existential explanations.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 776. Photo: Studio Vauclair.
French actor and stage director Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010) starred during the 1960s and 1970s in many films by famous French and Italian directors. The magnetic and politically engaged actor began his film career as one of the existential youth in Les Tricheurs (1958) and later often portrayed cynical bohemians or political activists.
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War. The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry. He assisted director Roger Blin with the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor. Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958). A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969). Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s. At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“ Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing. Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures. More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin. In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot, and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener. He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg. Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985). On television, he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre, he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris. His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu, and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816. Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War. In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier. Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles. His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011). During his long career, Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best Director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters). Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
or I've messed up my life in ways that you wouldn't believe plus I'm not like anyone else plus we are living in a screwed up world
Dr. Stern was testing his own management system focusing the mind on variety of other things. Staying at the new lab late at night he decided not to take a long ride to his home. He spent evening hours at the conference room meditating, looking at art.
Earlier the artworks attracted attention of handy men doing repairs at the lab. Stern saw a curious scene when the workers engaged into vigorous discussion arguing about meaning of the artworks.
A younger black guy said the artist was deprived of sex he fantasized about a woman, whose body parts he painted in his picture.
A Latin, middle-aged man said that sexual images in his culture symbolize fertility and existential predicament of life and death.
Stern especially liked these remarks.
A white supervisor said the artwork was spontaneous and had no particular meaning.
It triggered Stern’s interest in the communicative abilities of art to stir up the usually idle minds of people who work physically with their sole life principle to keep it simple and real to have fun after day of hard work forgetting the troubles.
For hours Stern was sitting in the conference room looking at the paintings not fully aware that he tried to interpret the meaning of the picture in a manner the black guy did and analyze character of the artist. He questioned what kind of man creates the artwork that fills the space with unavoidable presence. If by accident Stern came across the great new therapy, as the artwork impressed him to a point of admiration and desire to understand the artist the man. The longer he looked at the painting, the better he felt and his heart wasn’t poked by the steel arrows of Amour.
"I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it."
~ Steven Wright
✂ poésie trouvée ✂, N353, Heerenveenseweg, Oldeberkoop, Friesland
aka: Lethal Neglect
One of the methods suggested to get rid of "inferior" populations was euthanasia. A
1911 Carnegie Institute report mentioned euthanasia as one of its recommended
"solutions" to the problem of cleansing society of unfit genetic attributes. The most
commonly suggested method was to set up local gas chambers. However, many in the
eugenics movement did not believe that Americans were ready to implement a large-scale
euthanasia program, so many doctors had to find clever ways of subtly implementing
eugenic euthanasia in various medical institutions. For example, a mental institution in
Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk infected with tuberculosis (reasoning that
genetically fit individuals would be resistant), resulting in 30-40% annual death rates.
Other doctors practiced euthanasia through various forms of lethal neglect...
Dr. Stern was testing his own management system focusing the mind on variety of other things. Staying at the new lab late at night he decided not to take a long ride to his home. He spent evening hours at the conference room meditating, looking at art.
Earlier the artworks attracted attention of handy men doing repairs at the lab. Stern saw a curious scene when the workers engaged into vigorous discussion arguing about meaning of the artworks.
A younger black guy said the artist was deprived of sex he fantasized about a woman, whose body parts he painted in his picture.
A Latin, middle-aged man said that sexual images in his culture symbolize fertility and existential predicament of life and death.
Stern especially liked these remarks.
A white supervisor said the artwork was spontaneous and had no particular meaning.
It triggered Stern’s interest in the communicative abilities of art to stir up the usually idle minds of people who work physically with their sole life principle to keep it simple and real to have fun after day of hard work forgetting the troubles.
For hours Stern was sitting in the conference room looking at the paintings not fully aware that he tried to interpret the meaning of the picture in a manner the black guy did and analyze character of the artist. He questioned what kind of man creates the artwork that fills the space with unavoidable presence. If by accident Stern came across the great new therapy, as the artwork impressed him to a point of admiration and desire to understand the artist the man. The longer he looked at the painting, the better he felt and his heart wasn’t poked by the steel arrows of Amour.
Jung and contemporary Jungian analysts believe that in dreams and art, a prison often symbolizes the existential imprisonment of the individual in a lack of meaning.
Whatever the overweening negative desire, impulse or fascination that seizes us, it can become a jail, concentration camp or detention centre because it takes away our “freedom” and the more balanced movement towards a sense of wholeness.
Even the body as a whole has been viewed over many centuries as a prison in that it keeps us from the totally “spiritual”.
But even this belief is in itself a “penitentiary” because it implies that the whole of nature is “wrong”, a “sin” and the Devil when in reality, it supports all of life albeit with dark and light aspects interweaving among every situation and event.
As with every symbol, a prison can represent other situations such as the fact the dreamer actually does need to be “confined” and held accountable for “crimes” against his higher self.
Such enforced withdrawal from “wider society” through, for example, a depression is meant to raise one’s level of awareness by an imposed need for self-reflection, perhaps by means of insightful therapy resulting in the potential experience of the grace of understanding and self-acceptance.
Former Don Jail, Toronto
Jung et les analystes jungiens contemporains croient que dans les rêves et l’art, une prison symbolise souvent l’emprisonnement existentielle de l’individu dans un manque de sens.
Aucun désir négatif, impulsion ou fascination qui s’empare de nous, il peut devenir une prison ou camp de concentration car il enlève notre « liberté » et le mouvement plus équilibré vers un sentiment de plénitude.
Même le corps dans son ensemble a été vu au cours des siècles comme une prison, en ce qu’elle nous empêche de trouver la vie « spirituelle ».
Mais même cette croyance est en soi un « pénitencier » parce qu’elle implique que la nature entière est « mauvaise », un « péché » et le diable alors qu’en réalité, la nature prend en charge toute la vie, quoiqu’avec l’obscurité et la lumière désagréablement combinées.
Comme avec tous les symboles, une prison peut représenter autres situations comme le fait que le rêveur a besoin d’être « limité » et tenus responsables de « crimes » contre son supérieur soi-même.
Cette interruption forcée de société à travers, par exemple, une dépression est destinée pour élever son niveau de conscience d’une nécessité imposée d’auto-réflexion, peut-être par le moyen de thérapie perspicace, ayant pour résultat l’expérience potentielle de la grâce de la compréhension et l’acceptation du Soi.
Toronto
This is the local correctional facility in Oliver. Driving by it, made me reflect on a couple of existential considerations. The first, that I value freedom above most other things in life. The second one was about the prisons of our making, in our minds. We are freer than we think.
I hope some of you find this photo to be distinctively Louie (though without the typical saturated green): a tree trunk or two and the rest of the scene clustered with leaves, moss, and other greeneries. You get the idea.
Like many subjects I have shot over the years, this photo is also rather mundane, if not existential. Indeed, those fallen logs are not driftwoods in Siesta Lake, the tree lying on its back to the right is not exactly Jeffrey Pine, and Black Rock Falls is definitely not Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite. Nothing here is larger than life.
You know..., I was just thinking a lot of time nature is like a Zen garden (or is the garden an imitation of nature?), and the landscape photographer is the monk who dilligently arranges (and then rearranges) the stones and rocks.
Perhaps it is a romantic notion that there is a balance in the cluster, doubly ironic because we live in a world that is facing issues. But such notion keeps my eyes open, so I can continue on in search for the minute beauty in life.
Digital infrared B&W photo.
Stacks of three photos for extended depth of field.
Walking on foot brings you down to the very stark, naked core of existence. We travel too much in airplanes and cars. It’s an existential quality that we are losing. It’s almost like a credo of religion that we should walk.
There is, of course, something inherently romantic—if not heroic—about the extreme solitary explorer enveloped by nature. The very image of Herzog on foot recalls the iconic 19th-century paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, especially his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with its lone figure staring out at the wide vista above the clouds.
'Truth itself wanders through the forests,' Herzog writes near the end. Yet here he embroiders his memories for effect: The vast swath of geography between Munich and Paris is littered with industrial towns and cities.
Once he comes out on the other end, traversing the deforested Champs-Élysées (“We were close to what they call the breath of danger”), Herzog emerges victorious.
― Of Walking in Ice: (Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974)
by Werner Herzog