$\kappa\alpha\theta\alpha\rho\sigma\iota\varsigma$ (Katharsis) is a Greek word used by various ancient authors with the meaning of 'purification,' in both a physiological and moral sense. Hippocrates of Kos, the father of Greek medicine, is credited with being the first to use the term in a physiological sense. In the Corpus Hippocraticum, a collection of medical texts composed between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the physician aimed to 'purify' the patient's body through the 'evacuation' of feces followed by a 'purge'. The technical-therapeutic model prescribed the use of plant-based 'pharmaceuticals' with a dual purpose: evacuant and emetic.Around the same time, tragic poets began to use the term in a moral sense, making the katharsis of the tragic hero dependent on a hamartia, one of the fundamental concepts of Greek tragedy. According to Aristotle, the tragic hero is someone who, not being perfectly virtuous nor utterly wicked, enjoys great fame and prosperity, and falls from happiness to misery due to a hamartia—a mistake or moral fault that can be as severe as a crime. This was the case with Oedipus and Thyestes (Poetics, 1425b-1453a). However, in its origins, hamartia comes from a verb meaning 'to miss or fail to hit the target,' without any initial moral connotation.The theme of katharsis also possesses prominence in the works of Plato as the 'purification' of the body and soul. However, Aristotle was the first to establish a doctrine on the term, associating it with musical and theatrical performances. In the Poetics, he states that katharsis occurs when the audience feels sympatheia—the act of 'suffering with' the characters. For this to occur, the tragic hero must elicit specific feelings, namely 'fear and pity'. In the Politics, Aristotle compares the effects of sacred hymns to a medical treatment and purification. From the 16th century to modernity, this duality led katharsis to signify both purgatio and purificatio.Art and the SublimeThe history of this concept has always been associated with the idea of learning through suffering (paideia) and can be applied to various areas of culture. This leads to the notion of the sublime (hypselos), a concept applied to arts by Pseudo-Longinus (1st century AD), referring to what is elevated in both a literal and figurative sense. It encompasses the elevation of thought, the beauty of a landscape, or the power of an artwork's composition.Flavius Philostratus (3rd century AD) wrote a work known as Eikones (Images). In this work, he describes sixty-five panels (pinakes) embedded in the walls of a portico in Naples. Although doubts persist about the physical existence of these murals, such paintings of gods and heroes were common in Roman villas, as seen in Herculaneum and Pompeii.Philostratus presents himself as a lover of painting, outlining the ideals of an art critic:"Whoever does not love painting is not just to the truth, nor just to the art we find in poets, for just like painting, poetry delights in representing the forms and actions of heroes." He argues that painting, through the use of colors, represents shadows and varies the expression of looks to show fury, pain, or joy.
“Molecules of imagination” - is an abstract
painting project, where I am trying to
imagine how molecules of imagination
could look, if they existed. I am fascinated
by biology and molecular structures of
cells, but my molecules of imagination are
very different to the ones you find in our
body – they are abstract, they are
imaginary. I am drawing them very freely,
without a lot of thinking - imagination can
never be forced. Using bright colours
throughout in order to help me achieve
more of the unreal effect - in your
imagination everything is brighter. Visual
inspirations for the project are Miro and
Kandinsky with their shapes and colours.
Molecules of imagination are happy but
calm, they are free flowing and colourful. I
want people to look at them and engage
their imagination. I want to spread
creativity.
The day breaks by the frozen ocean at the onset of yet another pristine winter day. A red-haired young girl walks carelessly along the sidewalk, crossing the pale light of the first sun rays. “Hey! Red!”, the Starbucks delivery boy yells from the other side of the square, through the open window of his truck. “How about we keep on partying later? She shrugs her shoulders and flips him the bird with a crystalline cascade of laughter. Whatever party drugs she took that night – for she herself doesn’t know – they’re still keeping her alert and happy in a problem-free world, she doesn’t feel the least bit cold as the sidewalk turns to a boardwalk, nature invades the sights of the city, she keeps making her way around the ice, and the family lodge with the huge sauna where she’ll sleep tonight will be showing up any minute – and then, as she flies back to Barcelona tomorrow, reality will sink in. By now, tough, this is someplace in one of those Helsinki islands. And those Fins, hombre – they know how to party. But of course, the best part of it all, the reason why she’s camping in that lodge with the Finish friend she just happened to make amidst the crowd, was the wild, wild party the night before – the party of the red-heads, held in the Red Square in the wake of serial text messages sent all over the world to everybody’s cells, in all kinds of different languages. No one knew what to expect. But, on Friday night, the crowd could hardly fit the huge empty space surrounding the Kremlin. They say red-heads are in extinction. So let’s through a Red-head Party in a Red Place to celebrate our existence while we’re here. Red-heads of the world, unite. The less legally the better. Let’s show’em who really rules the earth. See you on Friday at the Red Square! And those Russians – if anyone on earth knows how to party, red-headed Russians damn well know how to party. Illegality makes sound systems stronger, gets DJs over inspired, and swoops dancers off their feet. With a little help form our friends. The young Spanish red-head is now close to her friend’s lodge. She comes find her in the sauna, they exchange a high-five, sit and still chat for a while about this bizarre extinction of the red-reads they knew nothing about before – and then, finally, they both fall asleep in total peace and quiet, afternoon winter birds chirping all around them, deer hiding close by, far away from their dreams. The party was grandiose, and the story of red-head extinction that called for it is awesome. However, it is not true. Reality is far better. Read-heads are by in means in extinction. They are just a minority, because the genes that code for them, together with coding for a very fair skin, were not originally human. It’s been scientifically proved since 2010 that we inherited them from our love story with the neanderthals that we first met 45.000 years ago, when for the first time we arrived in Europe coming from Africa. They still had communities along Southern Europe and the Mediterranean Coast as late as 27000- years ago. So yes, it’s a long time to play games. And whatever is new and different is always attractive. Let’s see. After scientists deciphered the full human genome in 2000, anthropologists who knew that Homo sapiens and Homo neandertalensis had shared the same land during the same time for so long went to work with no further delay: the neandertal genome was fully deciphered in 2010. And yes, around 4% of our DNA is theirs, by now pretty much everywhere on earth due to the modern constant miscegenation. Besides red hair, they gave us the genes for articulate speech, the genes for sensitivity to light, and the genes that should protect us from depression. One baby was already dug out with mixed characters of both species. And here is the most beautiful demonstration of how you can exchange genes: The skull of a young Homo sapiens is dug out, still bearing three teeth. All of them show signs of bacterial activity – but those would have been neandertal bacteria. How does this happen? Obviously, with quite a kiss. Sweet dreams, red-head girls. No one will ever take our neandertal genome away. You’re just proud bearers of it. Party on.
Most people imagine they just discovered how to get hold of a freedom they have not. Still, the main reason why they cherish their discovery is because they assume they will truly never be free. But there are some other people who know just how much dreams matter, hence every now and then they can enjoy complete freedom.
They can hold hands with those they love and start walking, then start running, and then quite soon they will be flying, in need of nothing else. In the world’s fairy tales, we often come into a life-changing moment where the hero has to choose between four horses in order to fight against the Powers of Evil.
One of those horses is as fast as time. The next is as fast as the wind. The next is as fast as our thoughts. The next is as fast as our dreams. The hero has no trouble picking up the last one, since it is the only horse running at a speed we cannot even see, and only what’s invisible to us is able to be, for sure, at any given time, faster than we are. It was out of those horses, galloping as they do over imaginary maps, that humankind was born.
They say only children can dream, but it is not true since these heroes remained ageless everywhere. We can dream whenever we want to be free, since it is also not true that only children enjoy freedom. All we have to do is to go get the horse that races but for us. And to leave again.
A LEVEL ABOVE by Clara Pinto-Correia
We all have our idea of home in our minds, but we don’t know what it looks like. It’s just that kind of magic that oversees life on earth: the moment we pass by it, or look at a painting, or set anchor at the beach where it stands, we know we came to the right place and that our soul will flourish if we dare to stay there. Daring to fight for what makes us happy is what happiness is all about. I’ve never been into eloquent speeches or brilliant metaphors. Heroic Able Dog Malachi sure is. All the crew members call him Mike, but is birth name is really Malachi. The other three words were the grades he had been progressively gaining thanks to his amazing feats on board. Mike had once been a completely black young puppy from a Portuguese Water Dog breed of eight, born at my house as part of a side-business of mine cut short as the War marched on. These puppies are irresistible young kids. My special friend the now deceased Captain Adams-Wooly came over for lunch on a certain Sunday when Mike was six-month-old, and the only youngster left because I meant to keep him in my family due to his rare perfection. But Wooly was so overwhelmed with the charms of that playful acrobat seemingly made of rubber and covered with shiny curls, and sincerely begged so much promising even more in return, that I eventually was not able not to offer Mike to him – even though after all his promises he didn’t satisfy my sole request of receiving his younger daughter in return. Maybe I shouldn’t say this about a deceased War Hero, but truth is he didn’t keep his promise and maybe God doesn’t sleep indeed – they were torpedoed by a Fritz submarine up inside the dense clouds of the Artic Sea, in such a way that it was impossible to give then anything coming the least bit close to a proper funeral. Adams-Wooly was not only my best friend, but we shall come back to this later. The point here is that he had made his will before entering the line of duty, and, amazingly or revealingly enough for a married man with six most well-mannered children, he had left me the pieces from his art collection he knew I really esteemed, together with his entire library, that gave me nights and nights on end of incredible travels over worlds apart. Also, it was clearly stipulated in the will that should anything happen to him I was to be the one and only and sole heir to Malachi. Oh, we were both so happy. I had raised Mike since birth, and up to his first six months, during this fantastic period when dogs learn the most, I had feasted his brain on everything one should know about everything that is not written in none of the books of any Naval School. I had been taking him with me to safe sailing trips to nearby places because I noticed right away he positively loved the experience – not necessarily the case with all Portuguese Water Dogs. It hadn’t taken me long to notice I had a very special dog in my hands. He was more than intelligent, he was visionary and had his own special powers. Other than that, he positively adored observing people and their ways. And then he adored giving it back to them. The Maoris were a great example, and that was right at the first time our Destroyer sailed all the way from the fogs of London to the splendors of Adelaide, with impossible battle plans and several dangerous seas in our way, but the amazing powerful forests of the Antipodes awaiting us as a reward. Mike was happy as a clam with the whole experience, learn to smell the Fritz a hundred miles away in no time, and spent the whole trip absorbing, absorbing, absorbing – and then sometimes, when he thought I wasn’t looking, giving his first shots at delivering, with tones and looks already to die for –while he was still registered as “Pup”. It turns out that our men were desperate from all that time at sea, craved fresh meat above all other fresh things not counting fresh beer, and we may all have our differences but does anyone ignore human nature – these were guys, these guys saw Moas for the first time in their lives, went ecstatic because these were huge hens they could easily kill with Maori daggers, they also could set up a huge barbecue next to the carcass, and in the meantime someone, somehow, would arrive from the city with drinks for all. And so we drank, we ate, and drank and ate a full second round, and went on overdoing this joyous fest so intensely that pretty much all of us ended up sleeping by the fire, without a care in the word. As far as I’m concerned, I had not been very interested in being there from the first moment, so I was present more as one of those little sacrifices your comradery forces you into, but hey – I should feast with the boys to thank them for all their efforts, and without really feasting my presence would be meaningless, and that Moa was a formidable bird. The next day I was informed by the Governor of Adelaide that we had screwed up everything we possibly could. We had no better idea but to fool around in a Maori sacred ground, where just about nobody goes on normal days, and punishments for these violations are so severe nobody even mentions them by words. We went hunting Moa without asking for permission to the Hunting Chiefs, so we messed up with terminally powerful guys, the kind that every year fight each other to the Last Man Standing to decide who keeps the honor of holding the post and deciding who’s allowed inside or not. We used Maori weapons as though they were ours, even though Maoris consider their instruments, hunting, musical, religious, or other, badly tainted and forever useless if anyone else uses them to the end they were created for. We had done all this to a warring and well-armed nation that truly enjoyed a good fight and was constantly just waiting for a good reason to have a good one, and that therefore wouldn’t take lame excuses from anyone. Besides, what lame excuse did we have? We had plainly used other people’s daggers and hunt in another people’s land. “We didn’t know”? But they were right there! “We’re filthy imperialists”? How could they understand the meaning of such expressions that early in history, nobody was putting things that way, yet. There being no wise decision for an act wise enough to sooth the catastrophe, I decided to play the sacrificial lamb and marched over by myself to the Maori village, where – why was I not surprised. I found everybody sitting around and Mike conversing with a huge guy with even more facial tattoos than the others that must be the chief. He waved to me and gestured for me to sit in their circle, with Mike wagging his tail and making his Speech Face. What’s my dog been doing? I asked. Well, said the chief with a placid smile. Basically, he started by explaining that acts like last night’s are to be expected since you are a bunch of filthy imperialists, but by now everybody knows that, as far as we’re concerned. But then we went into the truly marvelous part. He’s been explaining what we were not able to read in our dreams, our visions, and our nightmares of the last two weeks, ever since this all started. Some passages were impossible to read even to Te Pito Te Henua, the woman who goes to the right place, connects to the center of the earth, and sees the light. A beautiful woman with great white hear closed her eyes and nodded to me. Our dreams all had seven colors, like the rainbow, but them they had some more none of us had ever seen before. Within those strange colors we saw your boat coming. We saw men with a filthy smell killing birds cowardly by theft and treason. We saw a white man with many auras, sent to us to represent the differences white men can have in their quest for happiness but we could no hear what he said. And all of us saw people, people, people, meaningless, scary clouds of people. Now Mike has been filling the blanks for us. It’s a good thing your ship came, you know? What we now know might be as horrifying as to keep us up at night right, but at least we know. And we can see time rolling through all of it until there is no time no more. And we have a much better idea of where to look for the light when most lose their joy and the world gets dark. Will Mike come back? Because we don’t know that. Mike told me something as to being about time to get going back to camp. And then he slept his little heart away for an eternity. All that effort, all that carnival of seeing things, communicating with whatever it is that dogs can communicate with and we can’t, then passing his messages to people around him, them convincing them, then talking to me, -- you might think it curious but talking to me, and me to him, was easily the easiest part of Mike’s day, so just imagine how tired he was at the end, and what started earning him his first grades. Because the Lower Deck wanted, never because I said so. I would never start a movement to promote my own dog while we were fighting a war. Anyway, Mike’s Naval Instruction progressed to the point where the boys gave him a blue collar with golden stripes, and with the title HEROIC inscribed in red. Mike couldn’t be prouder and gave them a short speech to say so. In the end he performed one of his impossible acrobatic rubber numbers, everybody clapped, and this is how our Heroic Able Dog keeps the Lowers Deck happy under the worst possible circumstances. We were all a bit uneasy because our Destroyer was now escorting the small boats looking for mines set at sea by the enemy, and then there were friendly mines too, and all of this was happening, all over again, exactly where a Fritz submarine had exploded Adams-Wooly’s Destroyer to pieces inside a dense fog. You could almost hear the dead whispering, but you couldn’t understand what. It was bitterly cold, our decks seemed to leak more and more by the hour, and if it weren’t for Mike’s capacities to see through the clouds and feel movements through gigantic blocks of ice nobody would care to stay afloat past a certain point of flagellation by the ire of the elements. But we strutted on. We had a secret weapon. No, not all creatures are the same and not all great friends stay in touch in the same way. Mike started joining me at the bridge more and more, cutting straight to the chase not mincing words: my lover was saying we had to do this, my lover was instructing us to prepare that. How could Mike hear Adams-Wooly right where he had perished, with such clarity that he could pass on combat orders, I’ll obviously never be able to explain. But no-one needs an explanation for how the boys’ morale went up and the whole crew got combative and animated once word leaked out: we were being guided from heaven by a dead Destroyer Captain who loved me, and who passed his directions to me through Mike who had special powers and adored me. We were going to win. As the waters got free from any evidence of Fritz Navy, who in its hurry to clear the area sent many interesting items overboard including countless bottles of a noticeable diversity of excellent wines – which shows the notion of losing that battle had never crossed their minds before – there was less and less talk of loving deceased people sending messages. But, on the other hand, there was increasing talk of yet another recent feature from the European Cabinet de curiosités: Our Lady of Fatima. They might never have believed a word about her, but now, after everything they’d witnessed, none of them knew what to make of a lady strangely prone to show up above trees in great radiance ever since 1917, and then talk to little sheppards in a weird language nobody was able to understand. A young boy who had great talents for radios and photographs started coming to the bridge quite often when he was off-duty and I was there alone with Mike, to converse on things related with boats and places people would be able to get themselves after the War now that all this technology was there to serve. Then, one night, as there was really nobody listening, he asked me whether I really believed there was a lady showing up over trees, her feet surrounded by a perfect circle of white clouds, playing hide and seek with child-shepherds and telling them those things seemingly behind understanding. Well, I said. No one would believe us if we were to tell them about Mike’s perplexing powers and amazing capacities for making himself understood with us. Yes, the youngster insisted. But at least we understand him. From what I’ve heard, nobody understands the lady. There is a difference. Maybe the lady is already talking from a different level, you know, a level above Mike’s. Maybe we’ve been waiting to get there. In all due respect, what do you mean a level above, Boss? Remember those dreams the Maoris were having? And somehow Mike filled in the blanks for them? Just consider the rainbow, for one. It might not have gold at the end, but it has something more precious than gold, it has the mystery of vision. On the one side you have infra-red from the night, and ultraviolet from the sun, and there are already some glasses and binoculars making it possible for us to start to see two entire fields of vision we didn’t even know was there before. So there you have it. Join two more colors to our rainbow, and you’ll see an infinity of new combinations. Now that’s a paradigm shift in the making, no question. Boss, please. Talk to me, not that dead friend of yours. OK Son, you listen to my class, then. By adding just two colors to the rainbow we changed the world we see it – the way we can see it, if we dare to look. But it is a huge change, because there is a huge number of brave people. And I would say that, once started by the instruments that allow us to see things differently, thousands of persons were immediately seduced by these possibilities in the entire world. And in our generation, because of the way we have been travelling during the Wars, we have been meeting more and more different people, different societies, different rules and ideals for togetherness, we have been meeting the entire world and sure enough we have been changing while this new rainbow kept opening more and more, and more and more people chose to live by it regardless of how hard they had to fight so that their equals accept their choice of their new lives, and if these numbers will continue to grow because – ask Mike! He can tell the difference immediately, and you know why? Because if people want something in live, Goldarned, people want to be happy. Mike wagged his tail, barked a happy bark, and stated pulling pleasantly by the radio operator’s uniform sleeve as though this was all happening in a game. Boss, just about murmured the raio operator. What’s he saying. That the microscope aldo completely changed the way we see the world in cas I need anther metaphor. OK Son, do you understand? You know Boss, I’m scared shitless I understand it all. Then you understood perfectly. It´s amazing that something so precious might be born from such a horrible War. But still it’s true that this War was the trigger for our world-wide travels, where we incidentally met people who were looking exactly for the same kind of joy we were looking for ourselves, had quiet nightlong conversations with soldiers leaving to the Front the next day, or were blessed enough to discover some of those special people who taught us something we plainly didn’t know. I was stationed up here in the Artic before Mike was born. There wasn’t all that much to do, so Kadlu’s iceberg didn’t take long to become my home away from home. It happened to be the season of the auroras, and the sky was constantly tearing down full length in green and orange stripes, then blue and silver, there was this magical silence all over the valley and all around the camp, and the two of us laying there skin to skin holding hands as we watched the lights, under those huge fur blankets, swearing to each other we’d meet again. And of course, we will. After we win the war. So, you’re gay, Boss? No, not only. That would limit my map of the human heart where each one of us searches for its one fulfillment. I’m bi. I also love women. Maybe less seriously, but I do. Remember those Southern Seas Islands where we touched at for fresh water and fresh fruit on our way to New Zealand, when Mike was a Pup? Oh, if I could I’d take home a good half-dozen of those girls. They’re perfect. And they laugh without sin. Whenever I could I wen to the local dance bar just for the thrill of dancing with them, and it was always them, you know, initiating the talk, staring at me in the eye: “my horse is outside, what do you prefer, you ride in the back or you go to the ship by yourself?” – something to this effect, infectiously flirtatious, straight to the point but funny, without a trace of malice and certainly not with money in mind, at all. Beautiful girls, so beautiful, I totally understand Matisse. Oh, wait a second, wonna know who’s a real straight gay, gay as hell, believe me? Olsen! Remember Olsen? The guy from Norway who sold the ivory with our stories to the Cingalese jeweler and was badly short-changed? While we were in Colombo we went out to drink sometimes, and he never, once, had anything nice to say about any woman. So once I spent the night with him, certainly out of desire, but honestly, also out of sorrow. He invites me to dinner at his place next night and I figure it’s one of those get-drunk-till-you-puke sessions, all the other guys had that kind of look, but – what could I do, I had already been a bit snobbish with that crowd, poor Olsen, I’m going. Kid, I’m telling you, I arrive there and it’s only me, and he’s throwing me a dinner like it’s the Eastern Tour d’Argent, honestly. Only the two of us, marvelous cushions on the floor, candles, incense, flowers floating on water inside gorgeous containers, sitar music really vibrant and mysterious, he’s serving dinner barefoot with a black tunic and orange silk pants floating inside, doesn’t let me get up not even once, several courses, each one of them with a different fabulous wine… he had cooked all that just for me… and when I start thanking him he moves over and shuts me up with kisses, but what kisses. Son, we never, ever, slept during that night. A man so skinny, so blonde, so silent, and suddenly he becomes a tiger, but a crazy tiger, a creative tiger, with an intense desire that knows no end. I went back to ship – and to everybody’s mockeries, and little did they know – wandering what on earth had all that sudden passion been all about. From what I heard later, I realized Olsten cooked really well, had opened a small restaurant by the docks but the War made him close it, and his foremost pleasure in life was to receive distinguished and sophisticated guests to spoil them rotten. Those kinds of people just about vanish in a port taken over by the Infantry, you see. As I said, we get our joy in many different ways, even if the end result is the same. You’re not ashamed, Boss, to say things like you’ve been saying… No, Son. I hear other guys describing their adventures with women and I feel ashamed for all of us men, because they’re gross, gross, gross. You tell a beautiful story where your partner is a man, or several, and you’re poetic, where’s your flaw? Just chose your audience well. We’re not there yet. Where, Boss? At the time when all our different options will be looked upon as just exactly there, your own option. There are more? Why, are you disrespecting women? I spoke of gays, and I spoke of bis. But there are also lesbians, right? Like the Great Dane who rules over our kitchen. They both broke in laughter imagining Ms. Hellcoyt with dog’s cheeks and dog’s paws. Mike growled in frank disaprovement. Ah, youngster, Mike’s right as usual, we’re not being fair. She has that face and that temper, screams to take care of the slimplest thing on earth, throws herself shamelessly at any unaware newcomer that might accidentally replace someone – I learned recently that her favorite line is “this is war and we might die, so…” – but the truth is she has a heart of gold. One of these days Mike will tell you some things about what she does for her people in the kitchen. Boss, please. You talk to Mike. I just understand the main point, like all the others. Mike can show you a main point. She’s a good person, Hellcoyt, right Mike? But this young boy never gets to see that part. Mike placidly and sweetly leaked the boy’s hand. The boy almost cried. And you know who also was a lesbian, Son? My own good Mother was and had four kids. All boys. Your Mother, Boss? Yes. During her two final years in College she had a crazy passion for a school mate after many a short affair with enchanting guys – she was beautiful, fun, and intelligent, my Mother. She was a very good singer, too. And she was brave. So she managed to receive a grant to join the famed Voice Academy of the town where the other girl’s family estate was located. This other girl had specialized in Art and Design, so she got a position creating sets for the Academy! They lived in heaven with a very small budget for a couple of years, hiding wherever they could, daring to indulge during dangerous circumstances, spending entire Saturday afternoons in bed in my Mother’s small rented house… But sure enough, both their families decided to marry them to somebody convenient before they would be considered old maidens, chose the candidates and made the arrangements without even talking to them, and finally the four parents joined with the two daughters for breakfast to discuss the dresses and the guest list. It was the last time they saw each other. At their joint wedding. After Adams-Wooly died and she received my new library – I was at sea – she confirmed what she had already known in her heart for a long time. First time I came home on leave she told me all about how everything froze in time after she wore that wedding band. How having sex with a man was a sacrifice to her, and her husband didn’t even try to make it good. How she had been the perfect spouse to my father anyway, how she had educated us to the best of her capacities, but how at the same time she lost her voice, and she understood she had to completely forget about herself, or else her live would be a living hell. Your grandparents never told her anything. And my father never tried to give her any pleasure. Could she have been bi, with a better sexual partner for a husband? I very much doubt. If just the thought of having sex with a man strikes you as sacrifice before you even try, there’s not much hope. And the times were not ripe yet for lesbians to plainly use that argument to divorce their husbands or to plainly refuse to marry them, see. Do you think they can do that now? No! Yet I do think that being a lesbian, like being a gay, at least is no longer that horribly weird way of choosing to live it used to be. If nothing else, then because categories are mounting in their diversity. Bis, Gays, Lesbians… and what do you think of Ts? Ts? Ts are that weird light in the rainbow of their dreams the Maoris couldn’t understand before talking to Mike – Mike wagged his tail proudly and stood by the Captain as though certifying his words. It stands for Transsexuals. All those who are born inside a body with one gender, but everything in them, from their sensitivity to their way of managing conflicts, is typical of the other gender. They can’t do much more than passing themselves out for the gender they feel they are, but doctors are predicting Great Things. Hormonal treatments, surgeries, treatments of all sorts that will indeed pass one gender to the other. And in due time, I’m sure, we’ll discover more and more colors that have always been there, but we couldn’t see them before. And then we’ll have more pleasures, be happier, and in consequence fight less. Will society accept our differences, then? Well, history always shows society dragging is feet behind us, always complaining and calling us immoral, we all know that – but now we have so many people like you travelling the world and getting to meet each other, even the slow social response might finally change. And if we have easy days and time to explore our own depths in absolute freedom, oh, we can’t even imagine. We don’t even know what´s over the rainbow. But, for the time being, this is the nascent difference we already have to offer to the world: LGTB. But it’s still a secret, you hear me? The Navy is certainly not ready yet. You mention this to a less educated comrade, you let the word get around in whatever simplistic and stupid form it will take, and Son, it’s Court-Martial, you hear me? Court Martial for the two of us. The fields are ploughed, and we’re planting the seeds while everybody looks the other way. But we need those seeds to grow into healthy and resisting plants all over the world, and people must enjoy eating them. Do you understand? OK Boss, I can keep my mouth shut. But could I at least help through some seeds to the fields? Why do you think I wasted my time telling you all this? Mike barked joyously through the blinding fog. And so it begins.
These stories, together with beautiful illustrations, were registered above the Artic Circe by a seal hunter called Kadlu, when he had the venture of capturing a huge sea lion with two tick and shiny ivory teeth. However, one of Kadlu’s kids lost that carving next summer, when his dog-pulled sleigh broke down at Lake Netilling beach, in Nikorosing, where a Lake Inouit found it next spring and sold it to a man from Imigem who worked as interpreter at a whaler of Cumberland Sound, and that man sold it to Hans Olsen, who later was quartermaster on a huge steamer carrying tourists to Cape North, in Norway. When the tourist season was over, the steamer made a connection between London and Australia, with a stopover in Ceylon, where Olsen sold his huge engraved piece of solid ivory to a cingalese jeweler in exchange for two fake sapphires. I found it under some rubbish in an old house in Colombo and translated it from beginning to end.
Why do artists sell prints? It is easy to understand! In any museum around the world, prints are displayed as art masterpieces made by talented artists. The main reason why artists still sell their prints to art collectors it is because when they look at an old original print made by a talented artist from past centuries like Albrecht Dürer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Goya or Picasso, they f ind them timeless, beautiful, and valuable asset. The first country to start the printing process was China, at the end of the 2nd century. They invented the printing process with what they had at their disposal (three elements necessary for printing: paper, ink, and bearing). Later, the mass reproduction of images only became possible in Central Europe with the arrival of paper production in the late 14th century. Traditional printmaking techniques include woodcut, etching, engraving, and lithography. After the invention of photography, the art of printmaking started to be more creative, and artists needed to explore events more. For example, Picasso created more than 1000 prints made from woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs, etchings, dry points and engravings. Today’s printing process is more digital, with the use of different types of fine art paper, canvas, aluminum, and acrylic. Each material has a different texture, quality, and printing procedure. We invite you to take a look at the works on display. Enjoy the creativity!
It was with great pleasure that I set about to curate the present exhibition of Raphaël Kessler's photographic works. Held in conjunction with Late Birds Lisbon, the sequence now exhibited at the lobby gallery is a promising insight into the daily life of the LGBT community. Like most big European capitals, Paris and Amsterdam have an exciting mix of avant-garde art, culture and talent. However, minorities are still unrepresented and thus somewhat forced to exist in disconnection from their contemporary society. When Raphaël Kessler explores hidden messages in people or groups of people, he approaches them from behind, above, bottom, top, or front, making them highly visible and giving the viewer a sense of latency. Walking away from the exhibition we know that yes, those people exist; but also that no, other than a source of curiosity and amusement they are not yet fully recognized. My decision to curate Kessler's testimony is also a reflection of my respect for the importance of freedom in Art. Before the revolution of April 25th, 1974, Portuguese people lived under a fascist regime, where nothing of this sort would ever be tolerated – neither in photography nor in daily life. Attesting to how long it takes to shed old habits and principles, same-sex marriage in Portugal only became legal since 2010. Transitory Art is naturally poised to lead such changes, refusing the terminology of past, fighting for full freedom of expression, imploding traditional codes of self-control and refusing fashionable boundaries. I also invited Damien Arness-Dalton and Clara PintoCorreia to share some words about LGBT.
Transitory Art II is the continuation first started in Doha, Qatar, in January 2018. It reunites works of contemporary art from artists who join several types in one, including techniques, materials, and different visions and perspectives on the artistic and social world. These works include pieces of extreme international value and rarity, together with the legacy of art through time, retained in pieces from periods such as the Neolithic, the Phoenician, the Roman, the Arab, the different Renaissances, or the Neo-Classic, to name but a few. Interestingly enough, we can find in this museum some of the most ancient vestiges of the Phoenicians with Portugal and some other European countries, together with a fine exhibit of the Jewish presence in Portugal. In this exhibition, attended by more than 4000 visitors, both the artists and the audience were invited to consider the word of arts both intuitively and consciously, trying to find their own prejudice towards artistic concepts. As we do so art allows us to become better analysts od all sorts of knowledge, including science, philosophy, social, and even political. Art has always been a result of humankind’s creativity, to be appreciated by all other humans. Something totally put together out of AI cannot be considered art as we know it. We evidently need technology to lrave our traces behind, or else most of past and present art could not even exist. However, the creative process loses sense if we fall in the trap of having machines creating art for other machines to enjoy, which seems senseless at all levels other than childish amusement, since human minds won’t be able to make any sense out of those messages. The aforementioned prejudice can only come out of human references concerning their past memories for all we see in the present and will be able to see in the future. It is always useful that the observer gets the message that the artist wants or wanted to make come through with art—something often impossible due to the amount of contradictory informations read in the message our known about the artist, and these debates should be a good thing if viewers aren’t to be influenced in one way or another by those who have the most audible voices. Financial speculation makes this scenario even worse. Today’s world charges forward with unbelievable speed. In our minds, it is not rare that the term “evolution” lost all connections with Darwinism, since it came to represent mainly the technological and digital evolutions. However, humankind is not following this type of “evolution”, for a great number of reasons. Hence the delay and difficulty we often feel in fully appreciating Contemporary Art and the Art of the Future – Transitory Art. We can only use the term prejudice when there is a previous factual knowledge of the subjects at stake. All that matters is the existence of a sintony of sorts between the observer and the reader, so that we can have a logical perception of the work we’re looking at. We expect from Artists that they find their own path to inner development so that they can start creating Art through a message able to challenge the viewer. Social movements and alterations, actual dangers behind digitalization and robotics, science, religion, environment, gentrification, multiculturalism, sexuality, politics, literary thoughts of all times – art matters in al these fronts. Therefore, we expect the artist to implicitly or explicitly have a train of thought meant to be critical, logical, and directed to humankind. Artists always had an important role in changing the world. Otherwise, their function would be useless. Transitory Art is Art in Change. It’s the Art the changes the way we see all other Art forms. It’s meant to be timeless, fearless, and unprejudiced. Transitory Art is a form of Intelligent Art. We obviously will never all have the same knowledge of the same art forms. Neither shall we ever all enjoy exactly the same kinds of styles and works – which, besides, would be rather scary. But we should constantly question our minds and those of others, persistently and constantly. Albert Einstein “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”.
"We all see differently the colours and think differently. We all see the colours in a different way. Our eyes have a unique way of defining colours, even if we think we can see the same as other people. For centuries philosophers, artists, scientists, and writers, tried to understand the connection between colours, light and space. But now also Al.
Why do we all love the sun, the blue sky, sunset or sunshine? Why do some people hate pink, and others love green or orange? Is it possible that the reason why we hate and love colours is connected with the way we see colours in different ways and how we experience them? Is it possible to hate works of art only because of the colours and the negative experience we have? If yes, why?! If light changes the way we see colours, how does space also change our perceptions?
How artificial in future would get the world of art? We are creating machines capable of seeing and understanding colours, space, art, life, in the same or different ways.
What happens when we create art with machines? What happens when we create Al to make art? What happens when art is created by Super Intelligence machines capable of creating art and curiosity such as exploration, investigation and learning? How understandable will that be for human's art? Will that be considered art? "The age of Artificial Intelligence
(AI)" …
The Author "To write by the night out of sight, Has given me my secret delight. But to have my words held dear, And heard by many other ears, Drives my beating heart to tears."
Seeing Me "Youth is filled with floating dreams Where nothing is ever, what it seems."
Flight of Fancy "I’ve danced with love before, It whopped fast, and left me sore. Then the turning hands of time, Twirled your life into mine. Now I dance to a higher beat, Since you put little wings on my feet."
The Hearts Shadow "I loved you before I knew what it was, It gripped my heart, squeezed tight And left me pleading for mercy, not delight. Now to feel the love of another, Only makes me miss you more. I’ve tried to make it not true, So I can look beyond you."
The Road Less Travelled "The day will come when you feel everything is done, When who you are no longer exists, living in a skin that doesn’t fit. You’ll see the world through eyes refreshed, As if being sacredly blessed. It’s like starting anew, but knowing what’s true, That’s the gift, age brings timely to you."
Unforgiven "The silence lingers sadly on Our beating hearts, together gone The words once spoken with wine a gust Of insecure feelings, which caused our bust No more kisses on my cheek Not a word to me, do you speak."
Awakening "In the whispering morning light of day, As your gentle kisses fade silently away You leave me, in every possible way. Not upon my lips do you so touch But in my mind where you flourish and rush, There the stolen moments of our time Lie precious, and seemingly divine. Lingering with lust, you lick my memories with blush While in the day, you drift further away. The poison of my passion keeping me from sin, With no other man feeling worthy, to pass within."
Look Away "The eyes never lie you see And yours look dead to me. There’s no delight upon my sight. Just the shadow of the day You wished I went away."
The Unknown "When I think back in time, I’d always thought you’d be mine. Even when I went away, my aching heart with you did stay. As time passed on and so did I, the memory of you refused to die. Was it fate or fear that made it stay, or my belief in what could be one day? Only now when words have passed, do I realise that my love did last. But what could have been is not here now, As I stand alone, to face the unknown."
These are questions that accompany me in my experience with contemporary art and not only, to which I constantly give mutable and sometimes contradictory answers. Accustomed to seeing and bulimically experiencing this relationship, we easily fall into the trap of prejudice. Prejudice understood as a loss of honest reading, direct and not filtered by our ego, of the object of our observation. A sort of fear or laziness, which becomes prejudice when confronted with art; surely the wealth of "experiences" and images should provide us with the tools for this meeting, but more and more often it becomes the lie and the ballast on which to lay down and crush every experience, making us insensitive eyewitnesses of art. Transient art is understood as a form of intelligence in constant evolution, capable of learning and learning through it, it is in this relationship that we are becoming inert, and mistakenly confident we rely on interpretations and judgments that by their nature do not they belong to her more, precisely because they are irreconcilable with her data of continuous change. We are the result of a transitory art that allows us to understand that elusive fact that is part of us. Hence the urgency of questioning, with the artistic data / in front of the work, free from any previous interpretation In this encounter with art, the visual experience requires awareness and criticism of ourselves, but today we are increasingly accustomed to lend us forms of gaze / observation / analysis and reasoning, which no longer belong directly to the individual who is confronted with 'art, but clumsily borrowed from someone else, moving away from a real encounter with it: playing the game of a game whose rules are no longer known.
The sensation of colour is a universal human experience. Colour is a brain interpretation and can trigger memories. There is light for the perception of the World and we live in a sea of colours, emotions and sensations. We can see the colour from a certain distance, and we know the colours by heart.
Egyptian tombs were painted in magical places where the dead lived happily ever after. Natural stones were crushed and mixed with glues to make paints. For the quick drying effect egg, and in waterproofing, some beeswax was added. There are currently many oil and acrylic paints in tubes that may not be toxic. There is an intense blue that has sulfur. The white of purity and peace can be titanium dioxide. Cinnabar, mercury sulphide, shines and is red.
We already have television, cinema and colour photographs. A world of black, white and gray as it was then is hard to imagine. But there is ebony and ivory on a timeless classical piano, the orange of the sunset, the colours of the rainbow and the stained glass. The red of fire, love and passion, strength and energy.
The blood is red because has iron atoms.
There is a yellow warning that increases your concentration. Life begins in a yellow structure, the corpus luteum. The yellow of the sun, of the richness and the gold, the ripe lemon, the egg yolk, the canary, the colour of youth and optimism and the source of inspiration.
Blue is the colour of the sky and the sea. Ultramarine! Blue Navy! There is the blue whale. Baby blue has a calming effect and is a nice colour that gives confidence. There is also ice blue and royal blood. But the blue can be sad as in the
"BLUES"
The blue colour is rare in nature but indigo is the most famous and favorite textile colour of all time. The dark blue gives security. Is this why it is the colour of most uniforms?
The green of nature, freedom, the health of hope and jealousy. The green of youth is not yet ripe (like green wine!). It is associated with ecology. And if the signal is green you can pass!
In your messages paint the changes with purple and use pink for delicacy.
Atoms and molecules surround us. These molecules are functional, have architecture, are made up of atoms distributed in space and occupy their own places. These atoms are linked to each other by special affinities and empathies. These interactions explain the formation of molecules. And molecules are not alone, they are not abandoned. They interact energetically with each other. And this attitude of attraction or rejection, of liking to be closer or further away from each other explains their reactivity and physical state: solid, liquid, or gas. Our concept of molecule reproduces images. The vital water to life is H2O. But it could be ice, liquid water or steam! Please imagine. Human relations are measured by its affinity. So is the reactivity between molecules. And when some molecules break down to build others, we say that a chemical reaction has happened. Chemistry is the science of transformations and emotions!
And the neighbours? Sometimes there is no mixing. It's like olive oil and water. And the explanation are the molecules.
The chemist takes the molecules to the laboratory, makes experiments, creates new molecules. Imagination also.
Love is like that! Fluids in endless motions. Hormones, very clever little molecules which control our body and mind. All this move, collides and produces conflicts. A whirlwind of molecules, in a dance full of colour, harmony and happiness.
It is not easy to understand this simple process which can be complex. To solve the mysteries that go around there is a Table of named Periodic. A fantastic collection of special elements very well organized.
Exclusive is the intimacy of molecules in their essence: perfumes, paints, wine, fibres, gasolines, metals, glues, drugs, aesthetics ... they have private, unique molecules. We feel them!
Expansion
A Big Bang surfaces in my mind... Infinite space shapes itself and the void's fabric slowly evanesces. Everything is filled with energy that impinges upon space its properties. Minute quantum fluctuations disrupt the local canvas, the cosmos' fabric, giving birth to gargantuan structures. Small scale turbulence grows to large collapses and ripples in spacetime are sprinkled around my universe. The vanishing caos slowly becomes order. Time is eternal but suddenly stops: coming from the imemorial past the now moment is frozen while the dense, hot, energetic blue expandes and melts away the little waves in the sea of the cosmos. The new void between galaxies settles in, fills the rarefied universe, and starlight paints a yellowish penumbra, a mist of colors that perfumes my existence. The restless universe becomes a canvas, in front of me... in my brain.
Firestorm
A fireball crosses the sky in slow motion as the sun rises. The large meteoroid has hit the earth from behind and now falls faraway, leaving a blazing and smoking trail. But a red sky emerges as the sun climbs the horizon on a timely way up.
The sun has washed the yellowish colour in the last billion years. The helium core almost collapsed under its heavy density, rising its temperature by 5 fold, enough to push all the upper gas layers up. The solar surface cooled off and now we see a reddish giant star. But not for long though. The last breath of instability drives a sudden and strong expansion and the sun engulfs completely the Earth: goodbye blue skies, goodbye. Enjoy them while they last. These are visions of a memoryless future past.
Eurostars Museum in collaboration with Usia, presents Transitory Art II, group exhibition curated by Francisco Lacerda, which shows artworks from 21 artists that come from all over the world and represent the contemporary art scene. The project is characterized from an absence of main theme and the viewer is invited to start a journey through different languages, materials, reflections, times and genres. The choice to focus the exhibition on this "apparent absence" is only an attempt to highlight the multiplicity of thoughts and research characterizing contemporary society. It wants to represents a reflection of today's human condition.Technological development and and changes in communication processes have somehow broken down so many barriers and mixed genres. But at the same time they have woven the society of new doubts and limits that only the careful look of the contemporary artist can translate into a language understandable to man. This narrative consists to reflect this point of view through the use of numerous mediums and the dialogue between different historical and cultural periods. In fact, this experience is created not only between the works exhibited by the artists, but also with the museum's collection itself. In this context the exhibition becomes a place of dialogue between spectator, work, artist and space that becomes a determining element of the work. Transitory Art II it is a collective exhibition but also a non-place, whose boundaries are expandable and the artist becomes a conscious ferryman towards an elsewhere that represents the reflection of what we live every day, but that we do not always fully understand.
The uniqueness of movement. We are giants and we are tiny. We are beautiful and ugly. We are the most and we are the least. We are who speaks, and we are who hears. We are the color white and we are the color black. We are the light and we are the darkness. We are the day and we are the night. We are the sun and we are the rain. We are the movement. We unleash the guillotines and we lose ourselves to find ourselves in an ethereal space to lose ourselves again. We gravitate, we float between grimaces of astonishment and smiles of complicity. Time ceases to be time and the movement dictates the compass of our journey. We walked, rolled, jumped, and momentarily became static. In acceleration or slow motion, we are free, we are everything and we are nothing, we are the movement of the imagination.
There is an unrealistic moving through Anya Myagkikh paintings. In fact, we can imagine the move, the joy, the sadness, the fear all kind of human sensations if we let our look flying. Painting is a travel to our feelings.