@ojaaanaa - Tumblr Blog

Kiki Smith - Spiral Nebula (2016)

Aluminium

Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts... it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans: 'eternal values,' immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility.

Ingmar Bergman

theoptia

Jean Genet, from Fragments of the Artwork

miamaimania

“The Impossible III” by Maria Martins, 1946

improvisedliturgy

Emotions tell us a lot about time; emotions are the very ‘flesh’ of time. They show us the time it takes to move, or to move on, is a time that exceeds the time of an individual life. Through emotions, the past persists on the surface of bodies. Emotions show us how histories stay alive, even when they are not consciously remembered; how histories of colonialism, slavery, and violence shape lives and worlds in the present. The time of emotion is not always about the past, and how it sticks. Emotions also open up futures, in the ways they involve different orientations to others. It takes time to know what we can do with emotion.

Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion

kafkasdiariies

Cressida Campbell White waratah, c. 2000

lostfunzones

Poets Walk at Sunset. By Richard Cartwright.

avant-garth

Brugmansia arborea

These pretty and hallucinogenic plants are used in shamanic ceremonies.

exhibiting some of my most precious ceramics works (outside my snakes) end of month.

Ready to embody new energy.

hitku

‘Silence Before The Storm’, by Hans Thoma

dreaminginthedeepsouth

* * * *

Byung-Chul Han: My understanding from being a gardener is: Earth is magic. Whoever claims otherwise is blind. Earth is not a resource, not a mere means to achieve human ends. Our relationship to nature today is not determined by astonished observation, but solely by instrumental action. The Anthropocene is precisely the result of total subjugation of Earth/nature to the laws of human action. It is reduced to a component of human action. Man acts beyond the interpersonal sphere into nature by subjecting it entirely to his will. He thereby unleashes processes that would not come about without his intervention, and lead to a total loss of control.

It is not enough that we now have to be more careful with Earth as a resource. Rather, we need a completely different relationship with Earth. We should give it back its magic, its dignity. We should learn to marvel at it again. Natural disasters are the consequences of absolute human action. Action is the verb for history. Walter Benjamin’s angel of history is confronted with the catastrophic consequences of human action. In front of him, the heap of debris of history grows towards the sky. But he cannot remove it, because the storm from the future called progress carries him away. His wide eyes and open mouth reflect his powerlessness. Only an angel of inaction would be able to defend himself against the storm.

—Byung-Chul Han, “I Practise Philosophy as Art”, ArtReview