#whether regarding the symbolic system he is inscribed in

[snapeaddict]

Snapetober Day 4 - Home

Based on this engrossing article I was reading a few days ago whose thesis centers around the idea that the major flaw in Dumbledore's plan was refusing to tell Severus about the Elder Wand, to give him a chance at a future life free from spiritual burden. It's a really emotional read which uncovers many beautiful symbolic parallels - highly recommend it!

August, 1998

“They look better, my boy. I’m sure they will fade eventually.”

Severus did not reply. He wasn’t looking at the portrait, or at anything, really: there was nothing in that damned office he wished to see even a minute longer. Anything related to this place made him feel nauseous. Disgusted.

The painting, above him, cleared his throat.

“And what are you planning to do now, Severus?” The painted Dumbledore peered at him carefully, lowering his head slightly. “You are very young still. You have your whole life in front of you.”

Still, no reply.

“I have made some arrangements”, Albus continued hesitantly, his tone humble. “Funding. For your research.”

“You have what?” Severus snapped.

None of the surrounding portraits uttered the slightest protest at this tone, clearly used to Severus' colourful, and often justified, outbursts: it was a testimony to the long-established, tumultuous relationship between the Slytherin and former headmaster.

“I figured this is what you’d like to do”, Albus replied tentatively. “More experiments - publications. You could stay at Hogwarts, too: take whatever post you’d like. Or simply remain in your quarters, on research leave -”

“I don’t want your money, Dumbledore”, Severus cut acidly.

The man in the portrait clasped his hands compulsively.

He was nervous, it seemed.

A strange development.

“Severus, it was not my intention-”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the Elder Wand, Albus? You could have. It would have made everything easier. Less precarious. It was the flaw in your plan, you knew it - or rather, when your plans went awry, sharing that knowledge would have allowed us to correct them. Why... didn’t you tell me?”

There was a short pause, during which Dumbledore, for a rare few seconds, seemed at a loss for words.

“You were to become its master”, the old man eventually replied, slowly. “I did not wish you to be burdened with this. You deserved a fresh start in life, free from the weight of such a deadly instrument.”

The younger man’s facial muscles contracted. He closed his eyes, and Dumbledore dared not speak again.

“You put everything, everything at risk, so that I could live on without – but I was to live without you, wasn’t I? Having killed you, and lied for you, and given everything to you - but you, you couldn’t put your damn feelings aside, what you ask of others you cannot do yourself – and you expect me to accept this, to take back a job here, to go on? You dare look at me and talk to me about a life – do you know how many died?”

This time, it was he who was looking at the portrait, and the portrait that was looking away.

After all these years, shame had finally changed sides.

“I can never forgive you for this, Dumbledore”, Severus said quietly. “Never”.

A pause.

“I understand.”

Could portraits cry, too?

“I just wanted… I wanted to give you a real home here after everything, Severus", the painting whispered. "A safe home. No charge, no duty - just a home.”

Severus turned on his heel. He couldn't - he just couldn't.

But at the threshold, he stopped, his hand on the door handle. He closed his eyes again, breathing in and then out: something was happening. He welcomed the feeling; he examined it carefully.

Coming from the bottom of his soul, a wave of relief rushed over the farthest corners of his inner self, extinguishing the cold fury that had, a moment before, threatened to burst out with brutish strength. His gaze remained fixated on the handle.

This was the last time, he realised.

The last time.

He looked back.

“This was never my home, Albus. You of all people should know that.”

And he left, and the painted eyes followed his silhouette until it disappeared, they lingered where he had stood. Their bearer, though not quite alive, felt something akin to grief spread in his chest; and he looked and looked and kept looking at the staircase where Severus had gone, muttering to himself quietly, obsessively: can you ever forgive me for loving you so?

-

Minerva watched silently as he came down the staircase, a curtain of black hair hiding his face.

Severus had asked her to wait for him here; to listen to what he had to say.

His gaze met hers. He nodded.

It was rather strange, and he refused to confront the fact as of now, but since the war had ended, he felt… weak. Scared. Fragile.

Lost, too.

He also felt, and that was not a paradox, revengeful. He had not found in him the strength to confront Albus one more time without the knowledge that Minerva was near, for some stupid or cowardly reason - but it had also felt strangely satisfying to know, as he was speaking with the man, that she was there, very near, that she could hear it all.

That there were no more secrets; that Albus was the only one to not know she was here.

She smiled at him encouragingly, but he did not smile back. She climbed a few steps and reached out to him, pressing his hand into hers for a second.

“You did well.”

“I lied to him.”

“It is your right.”

“I mean – I lied to him, when I said Hogwarts is not my home. I think it is. Despite everything.”

Because a home could be unsafe; it could let you down, repeatedly; it could turn against you, watch you lose yourself and drown almost completely, and yet be the only homely place you've ever known.

When fear, threat and loneliness become a habit, they start to bring comfort, too.

Slowly, with movements that could only be described as motherly, Minerva pulled him in a tight embrace. She felt his body relax, and she held him tighter still, vaguely hoping that the longer this lasted, the more relief she could bring him.

“It is time for you to leave home, Severus. It is time for you to breathe.”

[newstfionline]

Monday, April 5, 2021

Coming out of the cave: As life creeps back, some feel dread (AP) Dinner reservations are gleefully being made again. Long-canceled vacations are being booked. People are coming together again, in some of the ways they used to. But not everyone is racing back. For some, even small tasks outside the home—a trip to the grocery store, or returning to the office—can feel overwhelming. Psychologists call it re-entry fear, and they’re finding it more common as headlines herald the imminent return to post-pandemic life. “I have embraced and gotten used to this new lifestyle of avoidance that I can’t fathom going back to how it was. I have every intention of continuing to isolate myself,” says Thomas Pietrasz, who lives alone and works from his home in the Chicago suburbs as a content creator. Pietrasz says his anxiety has grown markedly worse as talk of post-vaccine life grows. He says he got used to “hiding at home and taking advantage of curbside and delivery in order to avoid every situation with people.”

Vaccine passports are latest flash point in COVID politics (AP) Vaccine passports being developed to verify COVID-19 immunization status and allow inoculated people to more freely travel, shop and dine have become the latest flash point in America’s perpetual political wars, with Republicans portraying them as a heavy-handed intrusion into personal freedom and private health choices. They currently exist in only one state—a limited government partnership in New York with a private company—but that hasn’t stopped GOP lawmakers in a handful of states from rushing out legislative proposals to ban their use. Vaccine passports are typically an app with a code that verifies whether someone has been vaccinated or recently tested negative for COVID-19. They are in use in Israel and under development in parts of Europe. But lawmakers around the country are already taking a stand against the idea. “We have constitutional rights and health privacy laws for a reason,” said Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, a Republican. “They should not cease to exist in a time of crisis. These passports may start with COVID-19, but where will they end?” Benninghoff said this week his concern was “using taxpayer money to generate a system that will now be, possibly, in the hands of mega-tech organizations who’ve already had problems with getting hacked and security issues.”

Facebook data on more than 500M accounts found online (AP) Details from more than 500 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers. The information appears to be several years old, but it is another example of the vast amount of information collected by Facebook and other social media sites, and the limits to how secure that information is. The availability of the data set was first reported by Business Insider. According to that publication, it has information from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses. Facebook has been grappling with data security issues for years.

In Myanmar, Easter eggs a symbol of defiance for anti-coup protesters (Reuters) Opponents of military rule in Myanmar inscribed messages of protest on Easter eggs on Sunday while others were back on the streets, facing off with the security forces after a night of candle-lit vigils for hundreds killed since a Feb. 1 coup. In the latest in a series of impromptu shows of defiance, messages including “We must win” and “Get out MAH”—referring to junta leader Min Aung Hlaing—were seen on eggs in photographs on social media. Young people in the main city of Yangon handed out eggs bearing the messages of protest, pictures in posts showed.

With Swarms of Ships, Beijing Tightens Its Grip on South China Sea (NYT) The Chinese ships settled in like unwanted guests who wouldn’t leave. As the days passed, more appeared. They were simply fishing boats, China said, though they did not appear to be fishing. Dozens even lashed themselves together in neat rows, seeking shelter, it was claimed, from storms that never came. Not long ago, China asserted its claims on the South China Sea by building and fortifying artificial islands in waters also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Its strategy now is to reinforce those outposts by swarming the disputed waters with vessels, effectively defying the other countries to expel them. The goal is to accomplish by overwhelming presence what it has been unable to do through diplomacy or international law. And to an extent, it appears to be working. “Beijing pretty clearly thinks that if it uses enough coercion and pressure over a long enough period of time, it will squeeze the Southeast Asians out,” said Greg Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, which tracks developments in the South China Sea. “It’s insidious.”

Nearly 20 arrested in alleged plot against Jordan’s King Abdullah II (Washington Post) Jordanian authorities on Saturday arrested as many as 20 people and sought to restrain the movement of a former crown prince amid what officials called a threat to the “security and stability” of a country long regarded as a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East. Prince Hamzeh bin Hussein, the eldest son of the late King Hussein and his American-born fourth wife, Queen Noor, was told to remain at his Amman palace amid an investigation into an alleged plot to unseat his older half brother, King Abdullah II, according to a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official briefed on the events. The move followed the discovery of what officials described as a complex and far-reaching plot that included at least one other Jordanian royal as well as tribal leaders and members of the country’s political and security establishment. One official cited unspecified evidence of “foreign” backing for the plan. Biden administration officials were briefed on the arrests, which come at a time of heightened economic and political tension in a country long regarded as a bulwark of stability and an essential partner in U.S.-led counterterrorism operations.

Cairo’s mummies get a new home. And a grand procession on the way. (Washington Post) It was a parade unlike any other this city has seen. A procession of 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies streamed Saturday from downtown Cairo, where revolutionaries rose up to topple autocrat Hosni Mubarak a decade ago, to a new museum three miles away that represents Egypt’s future as much as its past. At 8 p.m., the mummies—18 kings and four queens—left the famed ochre-hued Egyptian Museum near Tahrir Square, where they had rested for decades. They were each atop specially decorated gold-and-blue-hued vehicles resembling boats. Or perhaps the symbol of a winged sun, an ornament worn by Egypt’s ancient rulers and seen as providing protection. Each of the 22 vehicles was emblazoned with the name of the royal mummy it carried. The multimillion-dollar affair—called the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade—had been promoted for months. Egyptian authorities are seeking to attract tourists, a key source of foreign currency, and alter the course of an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic, Islamist attacks and political chaos in past years. The highly choreographed ceremony was also a nationalist vehicle to highlight Egypt’s place in history. The nation’s authoritarian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who himself is often referred to as “a new pharaoh” for his ambitious projects and iron-fisted rule, presided over the ceremony.

Confronting late-stage pandemic burnout (NYT) Like many of us, the writer Susan Orlean is having a hard time concentrating these days. “Good morning to everyone,” she tweeted recently, “but especially to the sentence I just rewrote for the tenth time.” “I feel like I’m in quicksand,” she explained by phone from California, where she has been under quasi-house arrest for the last year. “I’m just so exhausted all the time. I’m doing so much less than I normally do—I’m not traveling, I’m not entertaining, I’m just sitting in front of my computer—but I am accomplishing way less. It’s like a whole new math. I have more time and fewer obligations, yet I’m getting so much less done.” Call it a late-pandemic crisis of productivity, of will, of enthusiasm, of purpose. Whatever you call it, it has left many of us feeling like burned-out husks, dimwitted approximations of our once-productive selves. “Malaise, burnout, depression and stress—all of those are up considerably,” said Todd Katz, executive vice president and head of group benefits at MetLife. The company’s most recent Employee Benefit Trends Study, conducted in December and January, found that workers across the board felt markedly worse than they did last April. The study was based in part on interviews with 2,651 employees. In total, 34 percent of respondents reported feeling burned out, up from 27 percent last April. Twenty-two percent said they were depressed, up from 17 percent last April, and 37 percent said they felt stressed, up from 34 percent.

[chrisengel]

In The Ticklish Subject, Žižek upholds Badiou’s politics of Truth and his “pathbreaking reading of St Paul” (TS: 3), while re-inscribing them into a Lacanian psychoanalytical framework. As Žižek points out, the core of Badiou’s philosophy is the opposition between Being and Event, which he theorizes in mathematical terms, using Cantorian set theory. Being, or Being-as-Being, is for Badiou an “irreducible multiplicity” (Badiou 1999: 104), a pure, inconsistent, unstructured multitude of elements. These existent elements form a “situation”, a positive ontological order accessible to Knowledge, a “consistent presented multiplicity” (ibid. 2005: 522), or what Žižek in Lacanian terms calls the symbolic order. When these elements are collected together under a shared term (like Victorian society, modern art or capitalism), they are, in Badiou’s terms, “counted as One” (ibid.: 24). From this count-as-One arises a representation of the presented multiplicity, a metastructure that Badiou terms the “state of the situation”, referring at once to the political state and the general status quo. Since “it is formally impossible … for everything which is included (every subset) to belong to the situation” (ibid.: 97), there is an excess of representation over presentation, of the state over the situation. This excess is reformulated in Žižek’s terms as the “symptom”, and exemplified by an economic crisis in the system of capitalism (TS: 131). It is this excess that opens the space for an Event, or in Žižek’s terms the “traumatic encounter with the Real”, the Lacanian objet petit a (TS: 141). The Event, which belongs to the domain of non-Being, suddenly renders visible what was repressed or made invisible by the state. In turn, the Truth is constituted through the active intervention of a subject, who chooses to be faithful to its potential for disrupting consensual knowledge and instituting a new order of Being. In Badiou’s Christian paradigm, Christ’s Resurrection is the Event that emerges from the foundational void of Being-as-Being, and St Paul is the subject of the Truth-Event. Although the Badiouian Truth relies upon a subjective intervention, this is not to say that it is personal or contingent. In Badiou’s own terms, “he who is a militant of truth identif[ies] himself … on the basis of the universal” (Badiou 2003: 109). Žižek insists on this point: although Truth is contingent in so far as it emerges from a concrete historical situation, “in every concrete and contingent situation there is one and only Truth” (TS: 131). For Žižek, Badiou’s notion of a universal, infinite truth is a crucial retort to deconstructionism and to the advocates of anti-essentialist postmodernism. Badiou’s insight also allows Žižek to distinguish between historicism and “historicity proper”: whereas the former refers to a specific set of historical circumstances that lead to, and explain, the Event, the latter “involves the specific temporality of the Event and its aftermath, the span between the Event and its final End” (TS: 133) – between Christ’s death and the Last Judgement, between revolution and communism, and so forth. It is the relation between Event and mortality that drives a wedge between Žižek and Badiou. Badiou’s theoretical edifice is built upon an anti-dialectical – and what Žižek criticizes as Kantian – opposition between two orders, Being and Event, and therefore finitude and immortality. His Event is radically separated from the death-drive, and linked instead with infinity, immortality and subjective constitution. Lacan’s act, on the contrary, is inextricable from mortality, the death-drive and, to use Lacan’s own words, “destruction beyond putrefaction” (SVII: 268). Instead of an opposition between Being and Event, Lacan insists on an “in-between” space – the “between two deaths”, the monstrous state of lamella – that bridges this gap. The subject’s immortality, for Lacan and Žižek after him, can emerge only from human finitude. Badiou’s distance from Lacan on this point is the principal weakness of his philosophy according to Žižek: “What remains beyond Badiou’s reach is [the] ‘domain beyond the good’, in which a human being encounters the death-drive at the utmost limit of human experience, and pays the price by undergoing a radical ‘subjective destitution’, by being reduced to an excremental remainder” (TS: 161). For Žižek, the Lacanian subject’s “limit-experience” sets them apart from the Badiouian subject (ibid.). Since the death-drive is essential to any rupture from the symbolic order, the Lacanian act is a better basis for Badiou’s notions of a new political practice than his own Event. In The Parallax View, Žižek moves beyond negotiating between Lacan’s and Badiou’s theories and places himself in a more direct relationship with Badiou’s then-unpublished Logic of Worlds. Žižek’s primary focus is on Badiou’s politics of prescription, mediated through Peter Hallward’s essay on that subject (Hallward 2005). As he explains, the Truth-Event is posited in Badiou’s theory as a point of departure from which new codes of action are directly put into place (PV: 322). The Badiouian Truth, in this sense, is treated as already realized. Its future power is anticipated by the subject’s fidelity in the present. Hence Badiou’s primary example of a subject of/to Truth is Paul, an apostle rather than a prophet: he announces that the Event has come, not that it is to come. Žižek finds this politics useful on a number of levels. First, it allows a clear distinction between radical emancipatory politics and the predominant status quo politics: whereas the former is an Event that at once stems from, and leads to, a universal Truth, the latter is a State, which according to Žižek is enforced and (im)mobilized by means of fear, whether of immigrants, crime or ecological catastrophes (PV: 323). Second, the possibility of a universal, immortal Truth serves him in his struggle against the humorously termed “gang of democracy-to-come deconstructionist-postsecular-Levinasian-respect-for-Otherness suspects” (PV: 11). Žižek offers two examples of successful practitioners of prescriptive political acts: John Brown in the context of abolitionism in nineteenth-century America, and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in the context of political equality of women in twenty-first-century Spain. As in The Ticklish Subject, though, Žižek raises several points of contention. Expanding on his previous criticism of Badiou’s disavowed Kantianism, Žižek criticizes his continued insistence on the opposition between the Real and the subject, between existent Being and emergent Truth, and his consequent refusal of any Lacanian ontologization of the subject. On the one hand, Žižek agrees that the excess of the Unnameable – which he translates as the “stupidity of the Real” (PV: 325) – should not be essentialized. On the other hand, he finds the maintenance of this unbridgeable gap problematic, since it jars with Badiou’s politics of prescription: since the Truth cannot be reinserted into the ontological domain of Being, Žižek argues, it remains to-come, it refuses actualization, it is a constantly deferred possibility in the future rather than a present actuality (ibid.). In other words, the notion of the Event is too idealistic, because the infinite immaterial order of the Truth-Event is privileged above the material, finite order of Being (PV: 166). His second problem with Badiou’s politics of prescription is that it is grounded in the concept of equality. According to Žižek, Badiou’s egalitarian political extremism (or what he terms “enforced ‘terrorist’ equality”) is “a phenomenon of ideologico-political displacement: an index of its opposite, of a limitation, of a refusal actually to ‘go to the end’” (PV: 326). We thus return to his aforementioned suggestion that Badiou’s philosophy is not radical enough. Th is time, though, Žižek insists that Badiou’s lack of radicalism is due to his abandonment not of Lacan, but of Marx. Against Marx’s crucial insertion of political emancipation into the sphere of economics, Badiou refuses to regard the economy as a potential site for an Event. As Žižek points out, his four “generic procedures” – his four principal categories for Truth-processes, art, love, mathematics and politics – exclude economics.

https://nosubject.com/Alain_Badiou

[porcileorg]

On Renato Leotta’s 'Eine Sandsammlung’ @ Kunsthalle Skt. Gallen (2018)

Author: The Bensplainer - Munich, October, 2019.

"And then you win nature (mechanical philosophy) by imitating it in a mythical way (rhythms, returns, fates)."

Cesare Pavese, 'Diari,' January 10, 1950.

'Eine Sandsammlung' by Renato Leotta (* 1982, 'by now' living and working in Sicily) is a curious exhibition [click here for images], if only one could consider the museological sense inscribed in the title itself: it allows us to reconsider our fragile relationship with a Nature of 'ancient' taste. In the central space of the Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Leotta stages an 'uncertain' archeology, an archeology I would like to define better, especially conflicting with many 'archival' claims in contemporary artistic practice. In the exhibition's press release there is a great insistence on the notion of 'archive,' but this is obviously due to contingent needs, whether they are of a conventual order, or of a pedagogical one (in order to understand that contemporary art is concerned).

Thus, a relationship with a Nature of 'ancient' taste: on four pedestals of different height, white on the sides, turquoise on the surface, Leotta has placed 29 sculptures, 'Gipsoteca' (2015). They present as many sections of beaches, by different rectangular bases, that the artist has produced on various Sicilian coasts. If the support of each sculpture is a precise cast of the regular irregularities—thus 'natural'—of the shed in question, on its surface the artist has transposed—yes, taking from, appropriating—the respective sand, made of specific colors and peculiarities, whether the latter might be considered 'kitsch', such as pebbles and shells; sometimes, only sands. First of all, the display of these geographic and geological specificities—of 'simulacra' in the most ancient sense of the term—has a pictorial quality: the rhythm of different sands' colors, of different natural elements, play through various forms with an abstract and planar imaginary. On the other hand, it is 'natural' here to consider consolidated experiences, from which, I believe, Leotta tries to detach himself. The first impulse comes from the 'Non-geography' by Robert Smithson: obviously the 'Nonsites' installations (1968) come to mind. The American artist puts a raw geomorphic material in a regular grid of minimalist containers, being this grid related to similar ones made of maps or documentary photographs (sometimes accompanied by statements), with the constructive function of estranging what is seen and what is experienced inside the exhibition space. However, according to Leotta, 'Gipsoteca' does not question the statutes and places in the sense of an institutional critique—thus presenting an attitude of conceptual taste—but it addresses the pictorial possibility of Nature, ordered by anthropometric symmetries. It shows a taste of a cataloger, which becomes formal, as in the origins of archeology. An archeology that has its prodromes in the formal passion of a Prince of Biscari, Ignazio Paternò Castello, eccentric and Sicilian contemporary to the most famous Winckelmann: from this Derridian supplement seems to breathe the practice of Leotta, a horizon that the artist himself defines 'Hellenic', through his constant research on a presence of an origin, and on a difference of Rossinian type.

 However, this does not have to force the reader in bringing back his memory to a certain 'Trópicalia,' even if a sentimental and ideological proximity can not be denied. According to Hélio Oiticica, the term 'Trópicalia' (1967) was the way to establish a spplement, with respect to the Western evolution of art and its narration. Leotta insists on the 'Hellenic' imaginary of his practice: according to the artist, Sicily does not stand for a search for, or a precise notion of origin, an exoticism somehow historical and castrated, but instead it offers the reason for reconsidering formal processes. It relates to fundamental questions about our necessity for images: why and what is an image, when I think of it, I produce it, I differentiate it from other ones? In this sense, the appropriation of Leotta still plays with Oiticica's 'apropriaçaoes,' out of every Duchampian dogmatism.

 This collection of sculptures has for Leotta a horizon, which he calls 'gliptoteca.' The glyptotheque is basically a collection of sculptures and plaster casts. Starting from the eighteenth century in Europe, the glyptoteque substantially housed plaster copies of Greek and Roman antiquities as well as originals and represented the basis of artistic pedagogy. Every art academy of a certain age preserves copies from the ancient and every art student has, sooner or later, copied from the ancient. But, if there are short circuits in the traditional sense of such a collection – as Canova did realize in Possagno – I love Leotta's subversivity in establishing a 'Hellenic' and geographic glyptoteque, based on sculptural and pictorial work on the field. Of course, this is not meant 'symbolically,' so it is worth to overturn conceptually the 'icon' of an ancient sculpture—many examples: from Jeff Koons to Francesco Vezzoli, who, actually, indulge in a 'baroque' symbolic imaginary. It is factually practiced: Leotta poses himself indirectly as a proto-archaeologist in regenerating the gaze towards most banal and current things, such as a beach frequented by people of all kinds, ages and social status. And his 'Gipsoteca' can be declined indefinitely, as the artist plans and as the title of the exhibition, 'Eine Sandsammlung.' seems to suggest. It reminds me of another object-simulacrum, 'El libro de arena' by Borges, the book of infinite knowledge that everyone is looking for, whose possession they all aspire to.

Work on nature, understood as the perception and reproduction of the latter, is therefore the center of Leotta's practice. Moreover, it shows a very strong difference with regard to a certain 'artpoverism,' from which Italian art seems entangled by too many decades: the use of poor materials does not respond to an estrangement, but to a contiguity, we could say, mimetic, if not 'sympathetic,' as if to say: Nature says more than language.

In the series 'Zeit und Wasser (Mondphase 1–5),' 2017, Leotta shows five average format silver-gelatin daguerreotypes (about 130x120 cm). At first glance, lines and biomorphic forms are visible, but at a more careful analysis there is something 'recognizable.' A certain proximity to the sea suggests me that these photographs have to do with a mirroring, a 'doppelganger' of nature. Still mimesis. This 'double fragile' is revealed in Leotta's own adventure. The artist has produced a wooden box containing sensitive paper; with it he immerses himself in the lunar sea with this surface-supplied diving 'camera obscura'; he obtains the photographic image of the moon's reflection on the sea's surface, thus crystallizing the image of a natural image. Almost obvious: 'Zeit und Wasser' reconsiders the 'Cosmogonies' (1960–61), the extreme attempts of Yves Klein to abandon the authorial order of the subject, in order to leave to plants, rain, wind, and color the 'imprimatura' on the canvas. Leotta goes back to his origins, that of a photographer, and to the simple chemical possibility of the trace. However, the story does not grasp the complexity of every single image, a powerful icon of the zero degree's eternal return.

The 'Multiverse' series (2017), three blue shrouds on which the salt traces leaves its 'automatic' on the canvas signs, is of similar sentiment. But this series seems too indebted to the Western tradition, and to Klein of course, if only for the use of blue: a visual tradition which is difficult to escape, if not to struggle with. In spite of the evident formal and cultural precariousness of these last works, its necessity in the exhibition's display can not be denied, as the spectator has to dive—obviously figuratively—into the expenditure system of the exhibition stage.

With this exhibition, Leotta is able to give a less didactic 'Hellenistic' breath to his work, thanks to the context of the display, of which he is a true 'maestro.' On the one hand, certain hitches are necessary, when one gives himself, as a supplement, to the foreigner of language: in a contemporary normative scene like today, where everyone understands everything, it is audacious to insist on a personal 'Trópicalia.' On the other hand, it is necessary to reiterate the implicit specificities and to repudiate exotic expectations, in order to present to an audience a certain idea of artistic identity.

I would conclude, again, with the Italian poet Cesare Pavese (from his 'Diaries,' 9 February 1950) and I would leave my reader like this:

“The theme of a work of art can not be a truth, a concept, a document, etc., but always just a myth. From the myth directly to poetry, without going through theory or action.”

[greggory--lee]

Truths and Facts and History About Whether Sky Culture Is Deteriorating Social Values of Bangladesh

So, I experienced my first identity crisis on a playground. I remember my classmates coming up to me and saying, “Sameer”, what religion are you? Are you Christian or are you Jewish?” And I remember being very confused by that question. I’d just moved back from Bangladesh, I was living in the United States – and I remember thinking, I’m not Christian because I don’t get Christmas presents, therefore, if I had to choose between these two options, I must be Jewish. So I would look up and said, “John, I’m Jewish.” And that was that, and actually went on those few months thinking that I was Jewish – mind you, I was eight years old. That is until Hanukkah rolled around and I didn’t get any presents on Hanukkah either.

My point is that identity matters. And not only does identity matter, your identity should be the story of you, and one that is fitting of your highest aspirations. So when I moved to Bangladesh two years ago, I was looking for an identity that would help me meaningfully express my connection to this land. So I began to do all of the things that I was really interested in: photography, travel, writing – and I began to find a common thread here. I began to see this vast diversity of this land – but not only that, but within that diversity laid the key to understanding what made Bengal so successful as a civilization. Here I can find an identity that I can be proud of, and it was an identity with a potential. So last year, I made a long awaited trip to Tibet. And when my Buddhist tour guide met me at the airport, he was so excited to meet a Bangladeshi. “Bangladeshi! Bangladeshi!”, he yelled out. And I couldn’t understand this, but it turns out that 1,000 years ago the Tibetan king was so taken by this Bengali monk, that he had a delegation sent down to Bengal to ask for him, to come up to Tibet and help reinvigorate and revive the practice of Buddhism there, after years of its decline and suppression. This was a tremendous task. And this Bengali monk took up this task, and he was so transformative and effective in his mission, that Buddhists today, and Tibetans all over Tibet regard him as Atisa, the super Lord, second only to the Buddha himself. And everywhere I went in Tibet, every monastery I visited, we see the statue of Atisa, a Bengali man, seated right next to the Buddha. In fact, if you go to Mongolia, Japan – even Australia and parts of the Buddhist world, you will still find centers, monasteries. and statues dedicated to Atisa – such was the profound influence. Now, how many of you here today have heard of this story? And how many of you here today know where Atisa was from? He was from right here, just a few miles outside Dhaka.

By the way this story is not mine rather one of my friends’.

And if you’re like me and you’re wondering, what kind of society gave birth to such a man – Well, 1,000 years ago, Bengal was an international powerhouse. It had an empire that extended as far west as Afghanistan, it dominated the Indian Ocean trade, and it built monastery university complexes like this at Paharpur. This would have drawn in scholars from all around the region to study at this prestigious campus. See the then version of Sky Culture was so much so prevalent in our society even in 1000 A.D.

Now, if we think of our identity in terms of the nation-state construct, then we have no option but to place so much emphasis on 1971. And in doing so, we risk losing sight of a much grander narrative of what it means to be Bangladeshi equipped with Our very own Bengali tradition and culture and values we adhere to.

See, when 1971 explains why we fought for our cultural identity, it doesn’t explain where our culture and identity came from. And the ‘where’ is critical because it gives us that critical insight into how we became such a civilization force in the first place. See, whether you believe it or not, Bengal was once known for its international prestige, its economic prosperity, and intellectual sophistication. And, so we see a pattern here that begins to emerge – that it takes an open, inclusive and pluralistic society to build the foundations for security, stability and wealth generation that we saw in Bengal. And the early rulers of Bengal seemed to have figured out this winning balance. So we see Bengal as this great diverse place and the rulers and the leaders are able to channel this great diversity towards productive means, openness, inclusiveness, and pluralism. So, if you’re wondering, where does this great diversity in Bengal come from – I’m a big fan of maps and maps can help explain a lot. So, if you see the map you notice the rivers that are coming down from the Himalayas, how they’re all coming right into the Bengal Delta – These rivers, of course, in the ancient time would’ve been early roadway systems. So, perhaps this map is a little bit clearer – you see, from China, India, Bhutan, Nepal… all over South Asia, all these rivers are going straight into Bengal. So you have, from a very early age, Bengal teeming with people, teeming with different ethnicity and cultures.

How do you harmonize this? Pluralism doesn’t just happen. You don’t just become a lovey-dovey utopia, just because you have diversity. Pluralism requires active policies that are designed to engage that diversity, and funnel that diversity towards socially progressive outcomes. It’s an active effort. So to avail more from Sky Culture we need an effective effort not to be the subjects of prejudice and not to become the victims of cultural imperialism of those

So we have, for example, during the Mauryan Empire, 2,300 years ago, King Ashoka – I’m sure many of you are familiar with him, he’s tasked with the enormous responsibility of ruling over a population of 50 million people, including the borders of present day Bangladesh — How does he do this? He would turn to what it would become one of history’s first examples of pluralistic ethic officiated as state doctrine when he inscribed this profound message on rock pillars and have them placed throughout his empire. “The faiths of all others ought to be honored for one reason or another. By honoring them, one honor one’s own faith and at the same time performs a service to the faiths of others – So concord alone is commendable.” And Ashoka – he received great points for this inspired vision. Not only do we regard him as one of South Asia’s most benevolent and greatest kings, but the Greeks and the Romans wrote about Bengal during this period, they wrote about our prosperous ports, they wrote about its quality merchandise, they wrote about our fine quality pearls and muslin, and not only that, but outside Dhaka recently a coin was found dating 300 B.C. – precisely this time period, and it was traced to Greece, so you get a sense of this early cosmopolitanism that Bengal engendered as a result of this pluralistic rule. And we see the same kind of pluralistic ethic embodied throughout the various rulers, throughout the ages of Bengal. But in the 20th century a dangerous myth began to emerge.

— Sky Culture is deteriorating our social values. Irony is in this 21st century we’re still blaming that myth to avoid facts and thus further deteriorating our moral values, significantly harming our social security. However historically, these narrow identifications did not exist in Bengal, in fact, Bengal was converted as a majority to Islam under the rule of the secular Mogul regime – a regime who could care less about what religion you belong to. So we see during the Bengal sultanate, when Muslims ruled over Bengal, poets described, for example, in the 1,500s how there were a Mahabharata in every home, how whether or not you were Hindu or Muslim, it didn’t matter – you read it. We also hear great stories from that same century from another poet, who talks about Muslims weeping when they heard about Rahma’s loss of his beloved Sita in readings from the Ramayana. These Bengali sultans also patronized Hindu works, so the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were translated into Bengali for the first time in this period. Also, Hindu humanist movements were supported by these Bengali sultans. And we see these Bengali sultans during public ceremonies using water – holy water from the Ganges, to purify themselves. So in essence, while these Muslims came to the region as foreigners, with the foreign religion in the 12th century, they essentially became Bengali Rajas as they were known affectionately by their subjects. So you see this great source of strength and unity that comes from this religious synthesis of the history of Bengal.

So when the British in 1905 wanted to partition Bengal in two based on religious lines in the first time in its history, you see people like Tagore taking a stand for unity – for religious and political unity, and you know what his response was when he first heard about this plan? He composed the words that would become, 65 years later, Bangladesh’s National Anthem, “Amar Shonar Bangla” – My Golden Bengal, How could you divide us? And he went out to the street and he tied a rakhi, a hindu band symbolizing kinship and fraternity, on the hands of every Muslim he came across on the streets. And then in the 1940s, when we had this partition of India, we see an existential threat to the Bengali culture come in the form of replacing the Bengali language with the Urdu language. And it was also proposed that the Bengali script would be changed to the Arabic script over time. And this began to rouse the masses, all of the sudden, Bengalis began to see the issue that comes with narrow religious identifications. It was an existential threat to the Bengali culture. So you see at this time – the Language Movement emerged. And one of the heads and founders of this Language Movement was Muhammad Shahidullah, who took a stand at Dhaka University and declared the ancient and syncretic origins of the Bengali language as a confluence of Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian influences throughout the ages. And in the similar spirit, you see Kazi Nazrul Islam echoed the national consensus of Bengal when he sang the song – “I sing the song of equality, where all barriers have crumbled, all differences have faded, and Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians have come together and merged.” And you see posters like this posted throughout Bengal during the revolutionary wars. Once again, Bengal was driving its strength and unity from this great pluralistic history. So when we finally gained our independence in 1971 – sure it was about economic differences, sure it was about political differences, but really it was the culmination of a 2,500-year-history of pluralism that was crying out, that was refusing to be ignored any longer. And now, once again, we are in charge of our own destiny.

And while loving thy neighbor may seem like good ethics, good moral ethics, it”s also good business, especially when you consider the rising opportunities that have come up all around us with this new Asian century. For example, you have India surrounding us on three sides and its meteoric rise. You see China to our north and the east, the world’s second largest economy, to the south, you have the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean – the Indian Ocean being the world’s largest hub of international trade.

And this opportunity is further described by Robert Kaplan when he said, “This ocean is once again at the heart of the world, just as it was in antique and medieval times… ” So, what’s our excuse for not tapping into this dynamic growth? We know the solution, and we have a profound history that serves as a precedent that we can live up to. And if you look around yourselves today, and you see this devastating reality of poverty that we’re surrounded by, know too that that poverty is a recent phenomenon. See, in the history, the grand history of Bengal, Bengal was always being written about in terms of its immense wealth, its grandeur, its beauty – So please, think about that, as you go out there, and you become those ambassadors of change.

What you’re seeing here is actually all the civilizations and all the peoples that Bengal has touched throughout its long history – and in turn, been touched by. So again, as you go out there and become those ambassadors of change for a more open, inclusive and globally engaged Bangladesh, know that history is on your side because the history of Bengal is the history of plurality and prosperity and that there’s no reason why our future does not hold that same promise.

My point- it’s the lack of conviction, not having a vision, and failure to take bold and subtle action may be the causes.

Education and Knowledge of one’s identity of oneself as a Bangladeshi Muslim/Hindu, above all as the part of The Holy Divine, must to be the core…

Source by Sudarshan Suvashish Das

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