Archives for July 2020

Social Contagion

"Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. " Wassily Kandinsky (Concerning Art and the Spiritual) "Ancient Greek words for blue signified the sea. In Tertullian and Isadore of Seville, blue referred to both the sea and the sky, much as the Greek word (bathun) and the Latin (altus) connoted high and deep by one word. The vertical dimension as hierarchy continues in our speech as blue blood for nobility, blue ribbons, and the many mythological images of ‘blue Gods’: Kneph in Egypt and Odin’s blue wrappings, Jupiter and Juno, Krishna and Vishnu, Christ in his earthly ministry like that blue Christ-man seen by Hildegard of Binge." James … [Read more...]

The Cunning of Covid

"I think the question of whether the theatre should adapt itself to the masses, or the masses to the theatre, has been settled once and for all. The masses only understood, or pretended to understand, the tragedies and comedies of ancient Greece because their stories were known to everybody and were explained over and over again in every play anyway and, as often as not, set out by a character in the prologue." Alfred Jarry (On the Futility of the Theatrical in Theatre, Mercure de France, September 1896.) “The productive logic of film is the productive logic of the work of art in the twentieth century.” Peter Osborne (in conversation with Paul Willemen in Working Together: Notes on … [Read more...]