#lenslike

[d1squ13tud3]

fortunetelling works as like a psychoanalytic tool but you have to have just a small prophecy to ponder over bc the interpretation of a small shard of noise will throw into sharp relief, literally lenslike, the neural-current-pattern you're suppressing or otherwise unable to access. but if you have too much noise you become overwhelmed by that stuff itself so you're just like basically jacking your shit to porn internet. so keep your prophecies FRAGMENTARY girlies

[fromthedust]

Betye Saar  (American, b.1926)

Black Girl's Window - mixed-media assemblage: wooden window frame with paint, cut-and-pasted printed and painted papers, daguerreotype, lenticular print, and plastic figurine - 35¾”x 18″x 1½" - 1969

Black Girl’s Window is a pivotal work from the first decade of Saar’s career, marking the moment when her practice shifted from primarily printmaking to collage and assemblage. The work weaves together references to the private, the public, and the mystical. A salvaged weathered wooden window frame isolates and surrounds a series of nine small vignettes in the upper half of the composition. Under depictions of stars and phases of the moon are a phrenological chart, a representation of Leo (Saar’s astrological sign), a daguerreotype, and, in the center, a pair of skeletons. Below and separate from this collection of symbols is a large silhouetted figure painted on the verso of a pane of glass. Flat against a blue background and a set of sheer curtains, this figure presses up against a transparent yet rigid and unyielding surface. Its facial features are hidden in shadow, with the exception of two bright-blue eyes cut from a lenslike material that creates the illusion that they open and close as the viewer moves around them.

Saar has acknowledged the self-referential nature of the assemblage: “Even at the time, I knew it was autobiographical,” she has said. “We’d had the Watts Riots and the black revolution. Also that was the year of my divorce. So in addition to the occult subject matter there was political and also personal content.”

Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)

[aes-iii]

a private performance | levesconte, des voeux | 520

The mate of the watch is whistling.

Gore tells him as much when he comes in, red-cheeked and laughing, from the deck; whether he means it as an instruction to Henry or only a note of interest is impossible to say. Not for the first time Henry thinks Gore should have been in Terror: in Erebus, slack then stiff, this can only require a reprimand. Henry marks his place in his reading—an old copy of the Gentleman's—and rises to his duty.

On deck the air has that lenslike quality which comes of sudden barometrical dips. The men are mostly quiet, about their business; it is a washing day and they are hanging shirts in the rigging to freeze. In his father's time they would have been queueing one another's hair: now, shorn and shaven, they light their pipes together, talking softly.

Even in the quiet it takes him a moment to catch the whistled melody, drifting forward from the quarter, so foreign and familiar for a moment that it is like a spell: Le Christ est né, Marie appelle, he hears, in his sister's clear voice.  It ties itself like a knot in his memory, below all sense: and with it comes a shiver of stone and candleflame, the biting cold. Mass: cold supper: frost on everything, glittering in the lamplight. 

Halfway up the ladder he must pause before going on, but by the time his heels click on the quarterdeck his face is a blank again.

"Mr. Des Voeux," he says, though suddenly it feels odd in his mouth, "Is this a bricklayer's yard?"

Des Voeux jumps: turns, looking guilty. "No, sir," he says. "Apologies, sir."

Henry joins him at the rail. Across the ice the cold light spills like liquid. James is below, with the captain; there is no one to hear them.

"Do you know the words," Henry says, after a moment. Des Voeux looks at him out of the corner of his eye: unsure as to what is wanted of him, no doubt. After a moment he swallows.

"No, sir," he says. "My great-aunt used to sing it. But it was lost on me, I'm afraid." A shrug of the shoulder. "My father wouldn't have it spoken in the house, after the war."

Henry, against himself, hums a note. Picks it up, and his voice is rough: how long since he sang?

Un flambeau, Jeanette, Isabelle. The vowels not quite right: even now he chooses the true French which might pass for a flourish of education over his own Jèrriais.

"Well," Henry says, breaking off. "Your voice is better, I'm sure."

"Thank you, sir," says Des Voeux. He looks uncertain, like he means to say something else. But he doesn't: just glances out along the waist of the ship, towards the motionless sprit. La sprêde, Henry thinks, following his look. L’êtai, la vaile. It hasn't gone from him yet.

"I could teach you," he says.

Des Voeux might laugh but he doesn't: just tilts his head. "I would like that," he says, "sir."

>>with thanks to this Jèrriais-English dictionary and apologies to any native speakers (correct me, by all means). i apologize too for "Jeanette, Isabelle": my knowledge of nineteenth c French carols is limited; it was that or "Çà, bergers", which seemed too on the nose.

[carlageronimi]

Getye Saar, Black girl’s window. 1969

“ Black Girl’s Window is a pivotal work from the first decade of Saar’s career, marking the moment when her practice shifted from primarily printmaking to collage and assemblage. The work weaves together references to the private, the public, and the mystical. A salvaged weathered wooden window frame isolates and surrounds a series of nine small vignettes in the upper half of the composition. Under depictions of stars and phases of the moon are a phrenological chart, a representation of Leo (Saar’s astrological sign), a daguerreotype, and, in the center, a pair of skeletons. Below and separate from this collection of symbols is a large silhouetted figure painted on the verso of a pane of glass. Flat against a blue background and a set of sheer curtains, this figure presses up against a transparent yet rigid and unyielding surface. Its facial features are hidden in shadow, with the exception of two bright-blue eyes cut from a lenslike material that creates the illusion that they open and close as the viewer moves around them.” MOMA