[...] reach moon was an object of pure observation =/= Moghana’s moon

scorching missiles of Helios
allurement
cheerfulness
harmlessness


Lucretius on the nature of things
look upward yonder at the bright clear sky
and what it holds
the moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun

moon-dwellers

icaromenippus Lucian’s satire about the moon lamenting the lack of imagination of ancient astronomers

trans-lunar celestial spheres

great intellectual abstraction is necessary to explain the appearances in the sky

Plato creates an image if completely harmonious world structure which makes circular rotating movements by means of spindles


Aristotle’s design gave a mechanical explanation for celestial phenomena (both terrestrial & astral physics)

Copernicus (+ Kepler + Galilei) ==> anthropocentric view of the world (=/= catholics church)


ibn Heisam --> visible light originates only from the moon
moonlight to be studies

ketab al manazir

size of the angle of deflection is so small that moonlight cannot be explained as sunlight

in 1609 Galilei’s telescope had 20x magnification

(moon’s) traces and spots

rough and full cavities and prominences
“let us not thing it an offence to suppose that she is earth and that for this which appears to be her face, just as our earth has certain great guilds, so that earth yawns with great depths and clefs which contain water or murky air, the interior of these the light of the sun doe not plump or even touch but it fails and the reflection which it send back here is discontinuous”

moon and the face of the observer

“there are people who believe that they are seeing a mirror image of the oceans on earth, and others say they are the traces of the mountains and mountain ranges of our earth; there are also people who believe that what they see is a figure that has been cut out of the reflecting rays that fall upon the earth”

optical homogeneity of the regions of the moon

ibn Heisam --> the color of the body has the effect of darkening the light
*color is a result of density*
“you will not find any color without density, because a body that s extremely transparent is not dense and therefor it has no color. for this reason we maintain that the color of a body can be equated with its density”

eclipse of the moon --> “this color is dark, its nature is blackish and comparable to red”


da Vinci's report
1. vapours rise from the moon, after the manner of clouds and are interposed between the moon and our eyes
2. moon composes of more or less transparent parts
3. moon = carrying thickness or density [refractive <-- this is easily how I modeled my moon for the WIELS exhibition]
3. moon ~= mirror (<== large amount of water on the moon)

Galilei
lunar waterlands (in Kepler’s dream journey Somnium https://frostydrew.org/papers.dc/papers/paper-somnium/)
Kepler saw (in the moon craters) large circular buildings that moon
s inhabitants (endymionians) had erect to drain the swamps

science and cartography of th physical features of the moon
Hevelius
W. Gilbert


moon’s waxing phase --> earth that is in brightlight reflects light back (one third of the sunlight that reaches it) to the dark side of the moon

“what if the atmosphere had really withdrawn to this dark face? and if air, why not water? would not this be enough to infuse life into the whole continent? why should noy vegetation flourish on its plains, fish in its seas, animals in its forests, and man in every one of its zones that were capable of sustaining life? to these interesting questions, what a satisfaction it would be to be able to answer positively one wat or another! for thousands of difficult problems a mere glimpse at this hemisphere would be enough to furnish a satisfactory reply. how glorious it would be to contemplate a real, on which the eye of man has never yet rested!” (Jules Verne, All Around the Moon)

the side of the moon facing earth is being gradually eroded by earth’s gravitation

Pythagoreans <-- one of the first recorded visions of an inhabitable moon on which animas and plants flourish, larger and more beautiful than on earth <== *it makes to sense to create a planet that is uninhabited*
“[...] for she would then appear to have come into existence vainly and to no purpose, neither brining forth fruit nor providing fir men of some kind an origin, an abode, and a means of life, the purpose for which this earth of ours came into being” (Plutarch, On the Face of the Moon)

metaphors for the silence of the space --> perennial question of humankind

the black sea sparkle with lustrous fires, like the ceiling of a vast hall of ebony encrusted with flashing diamonds
with what a soft sweet light every star glowed
no matter what its magnitude, the stream that flowed from it looked calm and holy
not twinkling
no scintillation
no nictitation
disturbed their pure and lambent gleam

...................................

night dreams (after WIELS's exhibition)
starting with the story of the jinn studying origin of species --> bestiaries
mix of reports from Hedayat'neyrangestan + Shamlu's ketab kuche + Marzolph's topology of persian folklore iranian stories + ajayeb stories --to--> ?

...................................

jin lamp
tree
scared face

book Skala:
royal fairy tales
baba jaga kostliva noha / bony legs


the first worm

death skeleton afraid of itself, of its own image
self-reflective

you are following, while being followed, and the one who follows you is being followed...

pop-up book
•endless doors (on top of each other)
•rotation: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4VTo8s/
•rotation: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4Vp8Yb/
•https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4Vw7qk/
•https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4VttgH/
•moon https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4VV2CC/


•Philippines --> aesthetics of poverty [culture of material poverty --> poverty as scenic design and working philosophy] (==> the imperative to eliminate nonessentials =/= my philosophy)
•Iran --> aesthetics of ?
•(?what is) Instagram or TikTok people's appreciation of beauty =/= aesthetics of poverty's coupling expression with survival and change

the idea that becoming sensitive to the aesthetic qualities of local materials ==> increasing one's power of expression

theater director = aesthetic coordinator = sensitivity + selectivity

scenography in artistic research
my early interest in stage design {~ use of backdrops in capturing the essence of a play or story --> a way to *establish setting* [=/= scene] --> sense of (not necessarily authentic) history, calling for the patina of history} ==> my recent scenic paintings --present--> *visual stream of consciousness* ~= diorama ~= to capture the essence of a practice interest optic episteme (--> establish a setting to get caught lured)

(in my work: assumption of)
symbolic use of visual elements --> collective consciousness + revitalized forms ==> vision of a larger culture : capturing a gestalt = everyone can understand



Shake, Rattle and Roll
romance, light sex, and comedy segments---laced in horror
(Tolentino)

horror genre
==> big young stars performing non-iconic roles
~= (analogue of [collective]) anxiety (of nation?) : making-do processes and mechanisms of ordinary people + imperative of profit and state formation
--> how (mis)governance get to be represented + how citizenry is enforced and embodied (at the ground level)

Philippines: from Marcos dictatorship --to--> neoliberalism: privatized, deregulated, commercialized, marketized public services

•Crane using psychoanalytical tropes --> horror = everyday terror
[*]horror: excessive communication
•Creed using trope of monstrous-feminine --> horror = gestalten deeds in adjection and castration
•Lim --> *horror = temporal critique* {fantastic local horror =/= historical time, supernaturalism, occult modes of thinking encoded in fantastic narratives}
[Bergson > Lim > Tolentino:] horror --> heterogeneous temporality, heteroglossia: multiple tongues, to disengage in certain (nation) formations

horrific real
translation of historical terror in filmic horror

historical real + filmic mobilization --render--> real as porous & artificial

horror --Tolentino--> transhistorical (transgressional) continuity of the project of desire & pleasure
--> masochistic viewing experience + trajectory of critique

(during Marcos order in Philippines -->) horror genre talks about the popular dialectics of the known & unknown, moral & immoral, inclusion & exclusion, defeat & triumph, struggle & redemption, normal & abnormal, reality & alternative realities, religious & secular
•horror provides a cultural trope for the imagination of the nation

anxious state in horror films --represent--> anxious state in ... (nation-formation, citizenship, etc.) --> irony: (the anxious state) it is not what it is
----> [*]viewing: a sadomasochistic act [you know it is frightful (or garbage) yet enjoy viewing (in KHM we called it hate-watching)] --> pervers pleasure ==> individual and social categories to remain constantly in a flux

intensification of anxiety ~=> carnavalesque moment of drawing pleasure

(in the film) history of a chosen local
logic of absence --> prohibitive history of violence + excess
ritual of horrific foregrounding

scene + coherence of meaning
*horror is performative : it needs to be restaged in order to be evocative of meaning*

sexualization of women integral to the genre of horror [aimed at its male audience, similar to Charmed]:
•sexy female leading role (in love triangle)
•man --> representing evil and underworld
•man --> representing true love (engaged in a battle for love + choice of the young woman, sexualized in the male contest)
•female viacera sucker --> female creatures need to show hidden skin [popular sex-oriented star --to--> female monstrous figure --allow--> display of prohibited body parts + heteronormative desire]

(female star rendered both strong and weak)
1. exposing and defying the horror figure (first)
2. embodying the horrific abject subject (second)

in the narrative of horror
•the moral forthrightness that makes the female subject survive, endure, move on
•they are punished but never totally obliterated into the horror scene


internalization of fear ==>? domestication =? maintaining the status quo in community fronts --Foucault--> docile ==> productive for state formation

(the survivor never fully survives and triumphs over the adversaries of the) horror scene --> open-endedness of the closure = of knowing + of being abjected

(libidinal drive in) citizenship claims in nation-formations ~= (libidinal drive in) continuing performative of the horror subject
}--> one is constitutes through but never thoroughly in power relations


white sexy female star + horror + social melodrama (= Charmed)

orally told tales of female violence
miscegenation
desire for liminal female sexuality
necrophilia
female haunting
heterosexual desire
nostalgia for truth
==provide==> template for cultural idiomatic imagination

historical experience --> futile & enunciated through the orality of retelling (+ being capable of retelling)


historical justice has not been served in actual social reality ==> the horror scene bears the constant threat and possibility of repeating itself on the future

...................................

#idea
namaz gestures as alchemical ruse to open portals, kill enemies, transmute objects, and other specs

...................................

Naveeda chapter 1 mosque

mosque =/= shell for prayers
•monumental structures built by the state

old mosque: part of complex devoted to
•learning
•dispensing justice
•channeling charity

oft repeated statement: Pakistan is a mosque [~= one has to learn to inhabit this place, aquire the right etiquette in sharing it]  (--> what it means to be Muslim in Pakistan)
•a place of assembly?
•a sacred place?

qabza, ghabze قبضه, violent seizure, forcible  possession
(depending on who you ask -->) Pakistan under ghabze by:
•the state
•venal religious figures
•unscrupulous lay muslims
•sectarian groups
•

“narratives of loss --> investment on self-betterment* (+ bettering of one's community) ~= striving

emergence of new independent mosques --> new property arrangements (+ admin + funding) --> growth of civil institutions

city bureaucracy of Islamabad ==Hull==> *uncivil politics* (سیاست غیرمدنی =/= civil society)


(like Tehran) Lahore = urban fabric palimpsest of:
•different eras of history
•political leadership
•social composition
•aesthetic styles
•modalities of social engineering
=/= dissolving the past into hypermodern

*postcolonial ~=> sectarian politics*

local mosque-related politics
سیاست محلی مسجدی


demographic change + population growth + strengthening of sectarian politics = ?


به طور قانونی غیرقانونی
legally illegal mosques
(illegal structures on land legally put aside for this purpose)

presence of bureaucrats within mosques in south Asia (since 19th century)

creating an ideal state by means of the mosque


loud zekr ذکر

mosque: (bearing) traces of the changing fortunes of its worshippers

qabza =/= voice: an individual's singular words and gestures arising from her embodiment *of hey maslak مسلک*


...civil servents
cultivating a modernist
cosmopolitan air
and their educated well-traveled
nuclear families


congregation (جماعت =/=? collective, community)
communal exchange
learning
contemplation

mosque employee hierarchy:
1. khatib خطیب the person who gives sermons during Friday prayers
2. imam امام the person who leads the give obligatory prayers during the day expect Friday
3. ghari قاری the person who had received enough training to render a pepper recitation of the quran
4. moazen موذن there person who gives the call to prayers, also responsible for cleaning the mosque


ghabze of mosque = expression of ambition (to found religious space) to forge the model Muslim community (beyond daily needs of worship)

***legal exercices & bureaucratic forms = a mode of experimentation*** (in being good [Muslim, intrinsic to Pakistan])
--> to enable civil relation (learning from Naveeda and Femke)


Islam is only one element of a complex weave of politics (involving local leadership, emergent communities of dissent and activism against an indifferent state)


flagging a social problem =/= filling a complaint


jahalat جهالت (=/= common sense + education + good breading)
resentment of uneducated
not class-coded?
--> character (determined by)
•nobility of birth =/= lowly birth
•enlightenment of education =/= ignorant
--Naveeda--> ‘maslak differences ~= grist for the art of war’


rumored
engineered
unfolding

sectarian geography of the city

mobilized in the form of bored policemen


prophet's era intermingled with Pakistan present
masjed zarar

gabze (mosque seizure قبضه مسجد) --explicit--> desire to stake a claim on a new nation-state (Pakistan) = expression of striving:
•tie religious/moral development to the nation-state development
•tie religious/moral development to the imagination of an earlier era of Islam

*expression of striving* in art: opening an art space, studio, school, or an institute (=/= create an institution as a conceptual gesture)
--> tie your development to the nation-state development and to an imagination (of change?)

•anything could be believed about a certain imam
•when someone (or group) attack you, they transform from human to animal
--> skeptical turn towards the world

neighborhood = ties + tensions

...................................

Naveed[...]