Miroslaw Balka

(stands & hair)

From White Cube Gallery: "Comprising installation, sculpture and video, Miroslaw Balka’s work has a bare and elegiac quality that is underlined by the careful, minimalist placement of objects, as well as the gaps and pauses between them. Often using his own body and his studio as a template or first point of reference, Balka’s work might incorporate personal or self-referential substances such as ash, felt, salt, hair and soap. Balka’s work deals with both personal and collective memories, especially as they relate to his Catholic upbringing and the collective experience of Poland's fractured history. Through this investigation of domestic memories and public catastrophe, Balka explores how subjective traumas are translated into collective histories and vice versa. His materials are simple, everyday objects and things, but also powerfully resonant of ritual, hidden memories and the history of Nazi occupation in Poland."(photograph)

some photos and a short paragraph

Longing: strong persistent desire or craving, esp for something unattainable or distant.
Longing is in direct contrast to having- therefore is directly related to time.
PROSPECTIVE longing (longing stemming from not having) is entirely different than QUONDAM longing (stemming from no longer having).
Prospective longing is potentially exciting. It inspires the initiation of action (which may simultaneously be inhibited by the possibility of failure). Quondam longing is inapplicable in the same manner. It does not, by nature, inspire action other than the subduing of itself. It is quelled by two means- 1. the shifting of attention towards other manifestations of time (the banal or the future) or 2. the indulgence in memory which acts as a "wringing out of the rag".

"A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto"

I have been, noncommittaly, reading some work by Milosz, but doing so only in English. Today I read a piece of his in Polish, and simultaneously the translation into English. I found the translation to be pretty inadequate so I re-translated it, obviously with much help from the skeleton of the original translation. Here it is:

Bees build a casing over a red liver
Ants build a casing over a black bone
The tearing begins, the stomping of linen
The breaking of glass begins, of tress, iron, nickel, silver and foam
Gypsum, iron sheets, violin strings, trumpets, leaves, balls and crystals.
Poof! The phosphorous fire from yellow walls
Consumes human and animal hairs.

Bees build a casing over the honeycomb lung
Ants build a casing over the white bone
Torn is the paper, rubber, canvass, skin and flax
Fiber, fabrics, cellulose, hair, snakeskin, wire
In flames, the ceiling falls, then the wall and fiery heat engulfs the foundation.
All that is left is, sandy and trampled down, with one leafless tree,
The earth.

Slowly, boring a tunnel, moves the guardian mole
With a small red lantern strapped to his forehead
He touches the buried bodies, counts, and digs on
Distinguishing human ashes by their luminous vapor,
Each one's remnants a different hue of the spectrum.
Bees build a casing over a red trace,
Ants build a casing over the place left behind by my body.

I fear; so deeply do I fear the guardian mole
His swollen eyelids like a Patriarch
Who frequently sat among the glimmer of candles
Reading the great book of the species

What will I tell him, I, a Jew of the New Testament
Waiting for two thousand years for the second coming of Jesus?
My broken body will deliver me to his sight
And he will count me among the helpers of death:
The uncircumcised.

Czeslaw Milosz

My book arrived today. "To Begin Where I am" by Czeslaw Milosz. It came used with an inscription.
"Dear Professor Carol Lambert, Every time I'll go to the office of International Affairs, I'll remember you; when people complement my English, I know deep inside that your courses brought my English skills on a higher level. But now, it's time to thank you for all your help, and wish you a very happy, wonderful time on your retirement. To you and your family My best wishes, Anna Mostowa."

Here is the most amazing excerpt from the book:

SPACE
Imagination, always spatial, points north, south, east and west of some central, privileged place, which is probably a village from one's childhood or native region. As long as a writer lives in his country, the privileged place, by centrifugally enlarging itself, becomes more or less identified with his country as a whole. Exile displaces that center or rather creates two centers. Imagination relates everything in one's surroundings to "over there"-- in my case, somewhere on the European continent. It even continues to designate the four cardinal points, as if I still stood there. At the same time the north, south, east and west are determined by the place in which I write these words.
Imagination tending towards the distant region of one's childhood is typical of literature of nostalgia (a distance in space often serves as a disguise for a Proustian distance in time.) Although quite common, literature of nostalgia is only one among many modes of coping with the estrangement from one's native land. The new point which orients space in respect to iteslf cannot be eliminated, i.e. one cannot abstract from one's physical presence in a definite spot on the Earth. That is why a curious phenomenon appears: the two centers and the two spaces arranged around themselves interfere with each other or--and this is a happy solution--coalesce.

opening paragraph

"Our indulgence in fantasy disconnects us from the anchor of the banal.
Our indulgence in the banal disconnects us from the pull of fantasy."

Just an opening paragraph to a statement I'm writing. It's similar to the essay below, but really stretches further to encompass a more broad body of work.
___
The body of work is the study of the relationships of individuals to time- in its trinity of the present, banal moment and the illusions of the past and the future. It observes and, at times, attempts to elicit, the constant teetering between the three states of awareness.

It explores four general concepts:

1. The role of fantasy as a mode of disconnecting from the present moment.
2. The use of sensuality to heighten and/or elongate the experience of the banal.
3. The breakdown of fantasy when prefabricated expectation or hope is confronted with the arrival of the new present.

4. Human response to entropy and the ephemeral: attempts at preservation.

___

"The internet serves as more than a medium for the exchange of facts, it is also one for the sharing of these fantasies, creating what I call, with some hesitation, a very rough draft of a universal consciousness- of our thinking, of our memories and of our longing."

Jiří Černický

But I wanted them whole, including the roots- no rarity should ever be destroyed. So I asked him to use my cerulean hair brush to comb out his hair during the rest of my stay in Berlin. Six months later I received the brush with the last strands of hair.
- Cernicky
Jiri, in his art and writing, is a perfect example of sweet, sincere, unadulterated communication. He makes intensely personal work so accessible and interesting. Besides that, his website is one of the most enjoyable I've come across in a hell of a long time. His work spans so many different discussions, from ideas of memory and sentimentality, to, for those of your more politically inclined, extensive social commentary. Most of his artistic endeavors are accompanied by really fantastic stories.

He writes:
Once I had a quarrel with my girlfriend. She was sad and had a pretty bad bout of depression. I wanted to make it up to her and please her. I tried by decorating the hood of a limousine, rented from a company that loans out such fancy cars for weddings, with her glorious little body.
"...it becomes obvious that Černický is an original exponent of the contemporary Czech art scene. He is the winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize and the Soros Prize. As regards art disciplines, Černický expresses himself with a broad spectrum of media, from classic painting through objects to videos. When not globetrotting, he can be reached in Prague." -Kontakt

homes

Last December, while looking for gifts I came across PREFAB, a book on modular housing. I was immediately smitten. I am always surprised by how much time people spend on their personal look and how little effort they put into the functionality and appearance of their homes, and more so, how strong of a hold traditional rules have on the way we arrange our living space. I've always seen a home as the place to be entirely selfish and indulgent. Now a new book, Spacecraft has been released and it looks fantastic.

"But not all of the buildings and installations are eligible for living in them. It's a broad range featured in this book: "We looked for outstanding international projects that are engaged in informal and unconventional ways of crafting space - found beyond architecture's beaten track. The book features on the one hand flexible, fleeting structures that only exist for a limited time such as artistic spatial interventions that live from their performative quality or mobile living units roaming freely beyond the paved routes of conventional architecture. On the other hand, Spacecraft focuses on spaces that are used temporarily. Whether vacation homes, urban hideouts, art pavillions or studios, all of the included work is distinguished by an challenging and poetic approach to spatial design."