[...]s 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
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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
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Naveeda chapter 1 mosque
mosque =/= shell for prayers
•monumental structures built by the state
old mosque: part of complex devoted to
•learning
[...]