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“Reflect on your artistic process —“

Of which time span?

We had our first HAL class on February 24th, if my calendar does not deceive me. That was 8 weeks ago… How much is realistic to be achieved in such an interval? When has one done ‘well’? It’s always hard to recall the past. I have no evidence of what was done and experienced each day. I’m left with a vague impression whether I ‘feel’ like much has been done; Whether I ‘feel’ like I have 'achieved' --- Whatever that means. In that case, I was asked to set myself clear parameters, to assess to which degree these parameters have been met. Admittedly, I have lost my parameters along the way… Perhaps I can recall them in retrospect.

I open my calendar to track which appointments were set. I started the semester with developing some rolls of 35mm film, I see. I had been going for runs in my neighbourhood, taking pictures along the way. Pleasurable.

On March 1st I had my first meeting of the Theater project organised by Gaja Caruso at 2NITE. Close to 30 people come together to create a dance performance from scratch in an entirely non-hierarchical manner – Script, Costume, Makeup, Scenography, Lighting, Music, Choreography, Directing – All to be conceptualised and made and organised and coordinated. I am responsible for scenography and script writing in particular. The piece will be performed June 19th. I could write scrolls about the (social) intricacies of this collaboration – It requires a lot of social grace. A type of grace which Gaja magically has, holding us all together. A type of grace I am hoping to improve on.

I applied and got accepted for the Erasmus Crafts and Sustainability project, which entailed several online session and a week-long excursion to Antwerp’s Blikfabrik from March 22nd until March 19th. We went to learn and connect with the people running a glass studio at Blikfabrik, who reuse old glass. We got an introduction to various glass techniques, including mold blowing. I was able to make a prototype of a glass figure, which I’ll hopefully cover with scoby leather in the coming weeks. The scoby Is currently growing. It is a sculpture project related to my research of light and flesh and it might serve as a starting point for my graduation project next year. I could elaborate, but the theoretical “meaning” behind it all seems irrelevant to me, currently. I am merely excited about doing it.

I also started on a second sculpture, involving a quite elaborate metal grid which turned out to be way time intensive to build than initially planned (as per usual). Within the grid, three small stained glass windows will be hung. Fingers crossed that I’ll finish it before the end of the year. It would be great to have both of these sculptures done and presentable — as either might serve as a prototype for my graduation project. Also, it would open space to muse on a next glass project during the summer break, where I’ll hopefully be able to do an internship at Glasmalerei Peters. I'm currently writing my motivation letter.

I’ve been participating as a performer in the research of Sofia Murillo’s graduation project on ‘Becoming Aquatic’ – We swim, we breathe, we feel… and we do that meeting once a week since March 7th. We will perform together at her graduation.

And, yet again, Exam phase at RUG – Which ended last week. This block’s courses were on European Law; Methodology and Research practice and Arabic Language. Not uninteresting. However, the attained knowledge has so far not been applied in the Minerva context. Will it ever?

And, of course, the residency at SYB – being silent and researching the fall with Shervin. We will make a small booklet out of our insights. We shot two rolls of film, I wrote a few things. A quite challenging experience. It was very nice to work with Shervin.

Meanwhile, reading Hannah Arendt’s “The banality of evil”; writing some more texts on my research topic and general reflections on god and faith… There was a point I suggested to Hantschel that I will try to find god during HAL – I revoke this as my  topic of research (while it remains a pertinent endeavour – for my whole life, potentially). Yet part of my prayer has been heard, as such, I have less salience for prayer and less desperate necessity to devote myself to some shape of god.

I have become less interested in making images, interestingly (I have not been painting at all, nor making prints). While the 2 sculptures I am working on excite me a lot – I don’t feel like creating much else at all, if I am being honest.

This aligns with my initial intentions for HAL (I think these might have been my initial intentions) – looking outward, disengaging from my own research, participating in other’s projects. More doing, less thinking. Less planning, more playing. Less desk, more frolicking in fields. I think I haven’t let go of my research as much as I initially wanted, looking back.

On May 3rd I’ll go to Ameland with Linn to record a performance of “Hiding in light”. I am planning to show this video material at the Bas Jan Ader exhibition in the Koeplzaal. For that I also want to convert an overhead projector to be able to project digital video.

These are the things I would like to achieve next block. I guess a parameter of accessing success is whether they have been done, or not

-       Finish the glass sculpture with Scoby leather

-       Finish the metal frame and the windows inside them

-       Try your best for the Theatre project; write the script and build scenography as needed

-       Try your best for Sofia’s project; perform for graduation

-       Make the booklet with Shervin about our Syb residency

-       Record the performance with Linn in Ameland

- Convert an overhead projector to project a digital screen

…Has HAL been a success to me?
If I’m being entirely honest, I am not doing much different in comparison to previous semesters. I believe all of these things I would have done if I was in HAL or not. I’m feeling satisfied with what I have done and started. I feel clear and set on what I want to continue doing.

I think most of all, I appreciate the opportunity of going to SYB. I think it was a really challenging and novel experience, raising several questions of my own relationship with art and artistic research - How does one commit one’s mind and body to an abstract, and poetic topic such as ‘the fall’? How does one stay with it mentally and physically? What does it really mean to research in such a way? What kind of results am I expecting? For whom are these results? Is merely experiencing enough? How can I communicate what I experienced, and is this experience relevant to anyone else but myself? In which way is it relevant to myself? How does one remain genueine? Is possible to perform in a non-performative way?

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-       I would like my assessment to focus on my research capacity, i.e. whether what I am thinking about translated into the work I make.

-       And whether my thoughts on light, flesh, glory etc. haver pertinence at all; whether they interconnect, or feel unintegrated.

-       I want my work to give an experience of beauty that is able to encompass the many contradictions of life.

-       I would like to be assessed on whether in terms of material and formulation, the work I made is able to do that.

-       I would like to be assessed on whether my work is leading up to a promising graduation work with the potential of refinement in the coming year.

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Glass blown figure from Project in Antwerp, which will be covered with Scoby leather.

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Speaking (when one is unable to speak; being heard when one's mouth is shut; listening to what is not uttered;...)

Glory and Tragedy, (by merely elaborating on several examples without explicitly explaining it) (Eichman; ...)

Seeing; Being Seen; Unseeing ; The physical, bilogical process of seeing (and deriving meaning); Computation of vision (and deriving meaning); Seeing not with the eyes but with the heart (Meaning and biblical allegories)

Vanity (connected to Glory)

Light meeting the material flesh, and meaning laying inbetween them; Light to indicate the passing of time, while itself being immortal (the body that meets light - a body that exisits in time - the meaning transforms. (Window over water)

Surgery (What lays hidden in pretence of integrity, coils bloody and violent; Image of two hands holding a human heart inside another human's chest) (RECENT SCULPTURE IMAGES)

Blood (The power of Red; Purification through blood --> Purification of the flesh by the flesh? How does it make sense?)

Hiding in Light (Adam and Eve before exposed; Images of the Performance, shown in book)

Suspended, unearthed (Feeling ungrounded, floating above, not able to find footing... different turns of phrase. The unbearable lightness of being. ...And yet wishing to be weightless)

The fall (earth-bound; Wishing to be weightless and wanting to have claim at glory that shines like light-divine. Yet one is a body of earth, and as such the fall remains inevitable. One must return to earth. Earth will come cradle you)

My body is merely borrowed, not owned (Eventually returning to earth, who will cradle it stone-cold and motherly)

Who is my keeper? (if my body belongs to earth, and my name is only as long as I live, is there something that remains immortal and divine; what is its home?)

Death (my grandfather; My grandmother and the window I am making for her; Hein)

Cain (The expression I've been to capture in portraits; Reinterpretation based on East of Eden)

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Falling against a wall

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Preliminary script for 2Nite Theatre Project 

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Preliminary script for 2Nite Theatre Project 

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After a fall from exhaustion, this piece is being read:

“A serene sense of the slow inevitability of the gradual changes in the earth’s crust comes over me; a consuming love, not of a god, but of the clean unbroken sense that the rocks, which are nameless, the waves which are nameless, the ragged grass, which is nameless, are all defined momentarily through the consciousness of the being who observes them. With the sun burning into rock and flesh, and the wind ruffling grass and hair, there is an awareness that the blind immense unconscious impersonal and neutral forc- es will endure, and that the fragile, miraculously knit organ- ism which interprets them, endows them with meaning, will move about for a little, then falter, fail, and decompose at last into the anonyomous soil, voiceless, faceless, without identity.”

One tries and one faulters. The fall is inevitable. Meaning only lasts so long. All returns in a cyclical manner. That can be cruel, that can be comforting. Here I am, giving myself to life’s motions (I have to; I cannot do otherwise). (Does one resign, am I pulling, or am I being dragged along)

And I I open my palms to the sun to receive

Word from whoever listens

I saw each colour split by tiny pearls

Of sweat in each deep crevice, each manyfold

My hands were shimmering almost opalescent

As such is my solitary musing on what life is and what it could be.

It’s raining it’s raining it’s raining it’s raining

A piece of ice the size of belgium falls into the sea

My boyfriend lays his legs over mine

It’s raining it’s raining

Animals are dying

And it’s hard to believe that people die

Without ever really touching one another.

The door clicks.

You came in through the door
In half-darkness of late afternoon I couldn’t tell, your face

No one had turned the light on

With the click of the key you crawled into my body

I knew you were crying

You pull to close the door

Go upstairs

Without taking your coat off.

The sink’s leaking, one drop at a time.

The water’s rising.
She taps her foot in it’s rhythm.

Doesn’t dare touch the vase

The water’s rising.

sweep up tired thought. Get up again next morning.

I don’t listen to the radio anymore

when it comes

Tomorrow. Again, grey, the streaks

Of work

Shedding the stone

Of the pavement, dissolving

With the idea

Of a singular endeavour.

They are Bunched, And out of

Hearing. Though the day

Come to us

in waves,

sun, air, the beat

Of the clock.

Though I stare at the radical

World,

Wishing it would stand still.

tell me,

And I gain at the telling

Of the lie, and the waking

Against the heavy breathing

Of new light, dawn, shattering

The naive cluck

Of feeling.

what is tomorrow

That it cannot come

today

Breakfast.

Two people sit somewhat awkwardly, silently. Sipping coffee.
Sound of a kettle being put on. .

After a while, that’s just a bit too long, one speaks: You know… the caterpillar has to first liquify itself before transforming into a butterfly

The other: Like soup you mean?
(meanwhile the kettle noise gets increasingly louder)

The one: Yeah, like soup

The other (not quite impressed): Oh, wow …

(The kettle noise becomes even louder and transforms into the sound of a plane)

(scene)

It is a Sunday in warm July

Sundays are made for people who can surrender.

I am looking up the blue sky of Cyprus.

There I see a dark green airplane flying above my head.

Jet skies going back and forth.

Tourists’ laughter in the background.

British colonisers who never left, using our land as a launchpad.

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Grid to hang the three stained glass windows in 

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Grid to hang the three stained glass windows in 

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The grid will be made three times to create a 3-dimensional frame. The green squares is where the windows will hang.

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To be hung in metal grid. Combining photographs (in this case screenshots of found fottage) with stained glass.

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Internship during the summer

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Willkommen bei Glasmalerei Peters Studios

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Glasmalerei Peters Studios wurde vor über 100 Jahren gegründet und ist eine der renommiertesten Werkstätten für Glasgestaltung, sowohl in traditionellen als auch in modernen Techniken.

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 "The Light That Sees the Eye That Shines" (Last section of this chapter) 

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 "The Light That Sees the Eye That Shines" (Last section of this chapter) 

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As basis for the performance of 'Hiding in Light'

FROM: MacKendrick, Karmen. 2021. Material Mystery : The Flesh of the World in Three Mythic Bodies. First edition. New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823294572.

"The brightness conceals the mystery, hides it within the light— but it is light that allows us to see. Light, which radiates out, becomes a bound- ary, too. The boundary shows us concealment." (54)

Instead of light being symbolic of revelation, it becomes a measure of concealment.

The article further mentions that "On some rabbinic readings, Genesis tells us that the first humans, created to live in Paradise, were purely innocent and divinely radiant, with nothing to hide (or to show), no need for darkness and shadow. They were safe in the light."

The garments made for Adam and Eve were not of skin, but light. They loose their concealment when they disobey God. Adam looses his brilliance, and he is clothed in leather.

Upon the realizations of the tree of knowledge, humans try to hid in shadow - And God, who's light, is able to find them out. Adam and Eve manifest in the dark, and their creator exiles them.

"When Eve and Adam acquire knowledge, they simultaneously acquire shame. Eyes opened, they see that they are naked and diminished. They are no longer the light that illuminates itself, and that is what it sees; they are no longer wrapped in light and safe there. This time, division is not a good. They have become bounded and separate beings who cannot wholly see themselves, whose world is small and constrained, and whose attempts to hide in the dark, because they are no longer luminous enough to hide in light, fail when di- vine light finds them anyway. By their sinfulness, humans are rendered more clearly distinct from the world. To be set apart from the world is a fallen, di- minished form of human life.108 To be only human is to be less, and to know less expansively and less clearly."

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Christkönig-Kirche, Hamburg; Window by Thierry Boissel; made by Glasmalerei Peters

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Window made by Glasmalerei Peters, Cathedral of the Holy Family, Saskatoon, Kanada

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-       Finish the glass sculpture with Scoby leather

-       Finish the metal frame and the windows inside them

-       Try your best for the Theatre project; write the script and build scenography as needed

-       Try your best for Sofia’s project; perform for graduation

-       Make the booklet with Shervin about our Syb residency

-       Record the performance with Linn in Ameland

- Convert an overhead projector to project a digital screen

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Talk with Afja's friend, whether I could accompany her to her study and what exactly it is she's doing there. What are processes that feel the most intimate? So far, what came up is the eye, the heart and blood.

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How is the research process going? (in group)

Life's complicated; How does art fit into my life currently (and could even accommodate difficulties I'm facing?)

My research has somewhat halted - There's moments where I feel the distance is good, and merely finishing what I've set out to do is not a bad point to be at. Other times I worry I will loose interest if I let it go too much. Then again, I think oversaturation would kill interest more than anything

Did record Performance of 'Hiding in Light'

I dropped out from Sofia's graduation project (Becoming aquatic)

Individual Talk with Hille - What do I want to show?

Maybe the performance? --> Means that I need to prepare a vidoe.

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My overarching field of research is the dichotomy of Light and Flesh. I have divided this research into several "chapters". Every chapter holds their own questions. Ultimately, this research should tie back into a sculpture made with glass.

As an exercise, I'll choose the Chapter 'Vanity' ---

Questions:

What, in the first place, is Vanity; Which are the ways one could define it?

How is Vanity connected to the glory and tragedy

What role does Vanity take in human experience

Is there a 'history of vanity' ?

Is (the representation of) God vain?

Method:

Most likely a lot of Reading (academic papers; religious texts; poems...), new and old

Reflecting personally when I feel vain, what role vanity plays in my life and human experience

Look at artworks related to vanity (ex. 17th century Vanity paintings ...)

Criteria:

Ultimately the research should lead to either texts written, reflecting on the proposed questions AND/OR lead to imagery that could serve as representative of them.

The research should tie back into other chapters and the overarching research dichotomy of light/flesh

The above 2 criteria are set so my research could provide material for my graduation project / artist statement next year

The research could result in a physical artwork itself, also

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The love of all mankind
Should reflect some sign
Of these words I've tried to recite
They are close, but not quite
Almost impossible to do
Reciting the makings of you

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It should end with abstracton - to singla the etheral

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'Hiding in Light' / Dandelion to camera at Rocks

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Examples:

Eichman

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Seeing being equated with truth (rather than hearing)

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neurological process of vision

hallucination

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connected to (fickleness of) Glory

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Autopsy - "To see with one's own eyes" (Stan Brakhage)

Opening; laying bloody and raw

(the Red) of Blood

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Light meeting material; the creation of meaning 

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Light meeting material; the creation of meaning 

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the unbearable lightness of being

Wishing to be weightless; Yet loosing attachment to earth feels alienating and despairing.

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tragedy / glory

Always earth bound; What is born on earth, dies on earth

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Cradled stone-cold motherly

The anonymous earth, that I belong to

Rape / Sexual Assault

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my body belongs to earth, yet if I have notion of immortality, where does anything besides my materiality return to?

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The first murder; seperation from God's love

East of Eden

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seeking a unity that is not of word and of thought, but felt

separation through inability to articulate and communicate

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For the Love of God is a sculpture by artist Damien Hirst produced in 2007. It consists of a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead that is known as the Skull Star Diamond. The skull's teeth are original, and were purchased by Hirst in London. The artwork is a memento mori, or reminder of the mortality of the viewer.

In 2007, art historian Rudi Fuchs described the work as "out of this world, celestial almost. It proclaims victory over decay. At the same time it represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene, the diamond skull is glory itself." Costing £12 million to produce, the work was placed on its inaugural display at the White Cube gallery in London in an exhibition Beyond Belief, with an asking price of £50 million. This would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist. In January 2022, Hirst stated that he still co-owned the sculpture, and that it was in storage in London.

The base for the work is a human skull bought in a shop in Islington. It is thought to be that of a 35-year-old European who lived between 1720 and 1810. The work's title was supposedly inspired by Hirst's mother, who once asked, "For the love of God, what are you going to do next?"

Designed and sculpted by Jack du Rose and manufactured by the Piccadilly jewellers Bentley & Skinner, 8,601 flawless pavé-laid diamonds, weighing in total 1,106.18 carats (221.236 g), over a platinum cast, cover the entirety of the skull. At the centre of the forehead lies a pear-shaped pink diamond, the centrepiece of the work. All diamonds used for the work are said to be ethically sourced.

Hirst stated the idea for the work came from an Aztec turquoise skull at the British Museum.

On 1 June 2007, For the Love of God went on display in an illuminated glass case in a darkened room on the top floor of the White Cube gallery in St James's, London with heavy security. It was reported on 11 June 2007 that the singer George Michael and his partner Kenny Goss were interested in purchasing the piece for around £50 million.

During November-December 2008, Hirst exhibited the diamond skull at the historic Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, amidst public controversy. The skull was exhibited next to an exhibition of paintings from the collection of the museum that were selected and curated by Hirst. According to Wim Pijbes, the museum director, there wasn't controversy amongst the board members. He explained that the exhibition "will attract people-and give a new aspect to the image of the Rijksmuseum as well. It boosts our image. Of course, we do the Old Masters but we are not a 'yesterday institution'. It's for now. And Damien Hirst shows this in a very strong way." A Belgian journalist in response remarked how the installation of the diamond skull at the Rijks was "an intentionally quite controversial project".

For the Love of God was also displayed in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, and at Tate Modern, London, between 4 April 2012 and 25 June 2012.

The work was displayed at Hirst's first solo exhibition in the Middle East, at the Relics Exhibition of Doha, Qatar from 10 October 2013 to 22 January 2014.

Between 16 September and 15 November 2015 the skull was displayed at Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Norway.

Between the 26th October 2023 and the 28th of January 2024 the skull is displayed at the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art in Munich, Germany.

Damien Hirst, the creator of the work, was part of the consortium which bought it.

Hirst said that the work was sold on 30 August 2007, for £50 million, to an anonymous consortium. Hirst claimed he had sold it for the full asking price, in cash, leaving no paper trail. The consortium that bought the piece included Hirst himself.

In the 6 February 2012 issue of magazine, Hirst elaborated, in his "10 Questions" interview: "In the end I covered my fabrication and a few other costs by selling a third of it to an investment group, who are anonymous."

In January 2022, Hirst stated the sculpture was still owned by him, along with the White Cube gallery and undisclosed investors, and was in storage in a Hatton Garden vault in London. took this to mean that the 2007 sale did not actually happen.

The media coverage of the "sale" of the diamond skull was extensive and led some to question to what extent the announcement of the sale was some kind of media art, especially as the "sale" continues to be in question. This was further supported by the performative nature of the Sotheby's exhibition and auction of Hirst's artwork the following year.

In an article in The Guardian, Germaine Greer said, "Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing. To develop so strong a brand on so conspicuously threadbare a rationale is hugely creative - revolutionary even."

Richard Dorment, art critic of The Daily Telegraph, wrote: "If anyone but Hirst had made this curious object, we would be struck by its vulgarity. It looks like the kind of thing Asprey or Harrods might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art. I can imagine it gracing the drawing room of some African dictator or Colombian drug baron. But not just anyone made it - Hirst did. Knowing this, we look at it in a different way and realise that in the most brutal, direct way possible, For the Love of God questions something about the morality of art and money."

Ralph Rugoff of the Hayward Gallery in London criticised the work as a mere decorative object, saying "It's not challenging or fresh. It's a decorative object which is not particularly well done."

The Australian art critic Robert Hughes described the skull as "a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerised by mere bling of rather secondary quality." Hughes added that "as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers".

The performative nature of Hirst's work was later addressed in the exhibition at Tate Modern, "Pop Life: Art in a material world", which critic Ben Lewis found very offensive: "the gallery texts have the temerity to claim that the greed-fuelled auction sale was a work of performance art in itself. That's just the same as Stockhausen calling 9/11 a work of art."

In her 2020 book, Written in Bone, professor Sue Black criticised the artwork, writing that the work raised questions "about the ethics of being able to buy and sell the remains of our ancestors, irrespective of their antiquity." She also criticised the use of real human teeth, arguing that it violated the integrity of the original remains for art.

Spiritus Callidus #2 by John LeKay, 1993, crystal skull

In a 2007 article in The Times, artist John LeKay, a friend of Hirst's in the early 1990s, claimed the work was based on a skull covered with crystals which LeKay had made in 1993. LeKay said, "When I heard he was doing it, I felt like I was being punched in the gut. When I saw the image online, I felt that a part of me was in the piece. I was a bit shocked."

In June and July 2007 Polish artist Peter Fuss presented his work For the Laugh of God at the exhibitions in Gdańsk and London parodying Hirst's For the Love of God. The work was a plastic human skull covered in "artificial diamonds".

A photo of the work thrown out with rubbish bags outside the White Cube gallery was a spoof by artist Laura Keeble who created a replica skull with 6522 Swarovski crystals.

In 2008, the Gaelic-language publisher Ùr-sgeul published a short story by Maoilios Caimbeul, "An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst" ("Damian Hirst's Skull"), as a fictional response to the work of art. This in turn was followed in 2009 by a single performed by the Gaelic rock band, Na Gathan, "Claigeann Damien Hirst" ("Damian Hirst's Skull"), released by Ùr-sgeul, which was inspired by Caimbeul's work. The song was shortlisted in the Nòs-ùr contest for a new song in a Celtic language or Scots.

In December 2008 Hirst threatened to sue the artist Cartrain for copyright infringement. Cartrain had incorporated photos of For the Love of God into collages and sold them on the Internet.

In 2009, Spanish artist Eugenio Merino unveiled a piece entitled "4 The Love of Go(l)d", a giant sculpture, encased in glass, of Hirst shooting himself in the head. Merino, in fact an admirer of Hirst, intended the piece as a comment on the emphasis on money within the art world, and with Hirst in particular. "I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself", said Merino. "Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically ... Obviously, though, he would not be around to enjoy it."

In 2015, the band Rosie released a song called "For The Love of God", which contains lyrics written from the perspective of the jewelled skull. The song was featured in the rhythm video game The Metronomicon: Slay the Dance Floor.

The piece appears in the second episode of the American-Japanese animated television series , when it is possessed by a demon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The skull appears in the music video of Simian Mobile Disco's song " Audacity of Huge", where the singer mentions owning a Damien Hirst telephone.

A diamond encrusted skull based on For the Love of God serves as the driving force in the video game 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

For the Love of God graces the cover art of Canadian rapper Tory Lanez's single "Diamonds", which he released on SoundCloud in 2017.

In issue #10 of the 2016 comic book series The Flintstones, a similarly gem-encrusted skull appears in an art gallery.

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For the Love of God is a sculpture by artist Damien Hirst produced in 2007. It consists of a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead that is known as the Skull Star Diamond.

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HeLa (; also Hela or hela) is an immortal cell line used in scientific research. It is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line. The line was derived from cervical cancer cells taken on February 8, 1951 from Henrietta Lacks, a patient who died of cancer on October 4, 1951.

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Introduction The word “goel” is defined in Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon as kinsman.[1] However, in ancient Jewish life, the term took on significant additional meaning. The Jewish Encyclopedia states th…

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Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins

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Read 17 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. In this brilliant essay, Jacques Derrida explores issues of vision, blindness, self-represe...

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The Bardo Thodol ( Tibetan: བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Wylie: bar do thos grol, "Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State") is a text from a larger corpus of teachings, the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326-1386).

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And Essay on Abjection - POWERS OF HORROR 

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And Essay on Abjection - POWERS OF HORROR 

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a central concept in Lurianic Kabbalah, a mystical framework developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria (the Ari, 16th century, Safed), which seeks to explain the process of creation and the presence of imperfection and evil in the world.

Here's a more detailed look:

Ein Sof and the Emanation of Light

In Kabbalistic cosmology, before creation, there was only Ein Sof—literally “without end,” the infinite, unknowable, boundless Divine. Ein Sof is beyond comprehension, without form or limitation.

To create the world, Ein Sof had to contract itself—this process is called Tzimtzum.

Tzimtzum: The Divine "withdrew" itself to make a space for the world to exist—like hollowing out a void in the infinite light. Into this space, a line of light (kav) extended to begin the process of creation.

The Ten Vessels and the Breaking

From this line of light emerged Ten Sefirot, or divine attributes (such as Wisdom, Kindness, Strength, etc.). These were supposed to channel the Divine light into the newly created world.

The light was meant to be "contained" by vessels (kelim) corresponding to the sefirot.

However, the vessels were too fragile to hold the intensity of the light.

They shattered under the pressure—this is called the Shevirat ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels).

The Consequences of the Shattering

When the vessels broke:

Sparks of Divine light (netzotzot) were scattered throughout creation.

These sparks became trapped in the material world—in shells or husks (klipot), the forces of concealment, darkness, or even evil.

This cosmic catastrophe explains why the world is imperfect, why there is suffering, fragmentation, and evil.

Tikkun Olam – Repairing the World

Human beings have a role in Tikkun, or repair:

Through mitzvot (good deeds), prayer, ethical actions, and spiritual awareness, we can elevate the sparks and help restore divine harmony.

Each act of goodness releases a spark from the klipah and reunites it with its source.

Thus, the world becomes gradually repaired, bringing us closer to the original unity of Ein Sof.

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( Louise Joséphine Bourgeois ( French: [lwiz buʁʒwa] listen ); 25 December 1911 - 31 May 2010)[1] was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious.[2] These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.

Sculpture by Bourgeois in the Domestic Incidents group exhibit at London's Tate Modern Turbine Hall, 2006

Bourgeois was born on 25 December 1911 in Paris, France. She was the middle child of three born to parents Joséphine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois. Her parents owned a gallery that dealt primarily in antique tapestries. A few years after her birth, her family moved out of Paris and set up a workshop for tapestry restoration below their apartment in Choisy-le-Roi, for which Bourgeois filled in the designs where they had become worn. The lower part of the tapestries were always damaged which was usually a result of the characters' feet and animals' paws.

In 1930, Bourgeois entered the Sorbonne to study mathematics and geometry, subjects that she valued for their stability, saying "I got peace of mind, only through the study of rules nobody could change."

Her mother died in 1932, while Bourgeois was studying mathematics. Her mother's death inspired her to abandon mathematics and to begin studying art. She continued to study art by joining classes where translators were needed for English-speaking students, especially because translators were not charged tuition. In one such class, Fernand Léger saw her work and told her she was a sculptor, not a painter. Bourgeois took a job as a docent, leading tours at the Musée du Louvre.

Bourgeois graduated from the Sorbonne in 1935. She began studying art in Paris, first at the École des Beaux-Arts and École du Louvre, and after 1932 in the independent academies of Montparnasse and Montmartre such as Académie Colarossi, Académie Ranson, Académie Julian, Académie de la Grande Chaumière and with André Lhote, Fernand Léger, Paul Colin and Cassandre. Bourgeois had a desire for first-hand experience and frequently visited studios in Paris, learning techniques from the artists and assisting with exhibitions. From 1934 to 1938, she is said to have apprenticed herself to some of the so-called "masters" of the time, including Fernand Léger, Paul Colin, and André Lhote. Later, however, Bourgeois became disillusioned with the conception of patriarchal genius which dominated the art world, a change motivated in part by these masters' refusal to recognize women artists.

In 1938, she opened her own gallery in a space next door to her father's tapestry gallery where she showed the work of artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Henri Matisse and Suzanne Valadon, and where she met visiting American art professor Robert Goldwater as a customer. They married and moved to the United States (where he taught at New York University). They had three sons; one was adopted. The marriage lasted until Goldwater's death in 1973.

Bourgeois settled in New York City with her husband in 1938. She continued her education at the Art Students League of New York, studying painting under Vaclav Vytlacil, and also producing sculptures and prints. "The first painting had a grid: the grid is a very peaceful thing because nothing can go wrong ... everything is complete. There is no room for anxiety ... everything has a place, everything is welcome."

Bourgeois incorporated those autobiographical references to her sculpture Quarantania I, on display in the Cullen Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Confrérie (c.1940) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2022

For Bourgeois, the early 1940s represented the difficulties of a transition to a new country and the struggle to enter the exhibition world of New York City. Her work during this time was constructed from junkyard scraps and driftwood which she used to carve upright wood sculptures. The impurities of the wood were then camouflaged with paint, after which nails were employed to invent holes and scratches in the endeavor to portray some emotion. The Sleeping Figure is one such example which depicts a war figure that is unable to face the real world due to vulnerability. Throughout her life, Bourgeois's work was created from revisiting her own troubled past as she found inspiration and temporary catharsis from her childhood years and the abuse she suffered from her father. Slowly she developed more artistic confidence, although her middle years are more opaque, which might be due to the fact that she received very little attention from the art world despite having her first solo show in 1945. In 1951, her father died and she became an American citizen.

In 1945, Bourgeois was featured in an exhibition of fourteen women artists at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century, aptly titled "The Women." While this exhibition stimulated debate about the place of women artists in the art world, it also defined them as separate from their canonized male counterparts and reinforced the damaging notion of a universally feminine experience. Commenting on her reception as a woman artist in the 1940s, Bourgeois said that she doesn't "know what art made by a woman is....There is no feminine experience in art, at least not in my case, because not just by being a woman does one have a different experience."

In 1954, Bourgeois joined the American Abstract Artists Group, with several contemporaries, among them Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. At this time she also befriended the artists Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. As part of the American Abstract Artists Group, Bourgeois made the transition from wood and upright structures to marble, plaster, and bronze as she investigated concerns like fear, vulnerability, and loss of control. This transition was a turning point. She referred to her art as a series or sequence closely related to days and circumstances, describing her early work as the fear of falling which later transformed into the art of falling and the final evolution as the art of hanging in there. Her conflicts in real life empowered her to authenticate her experiences and struggles through a unique art form. In 1958, Bourgeois and her husband moved into a terraced house at West 20th Street, in Chelsea, Manhattan, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life.

Despite the fact that she rejected the idea that her art was feminist, Bourgeois's subject was the feminine. Works such as Femme Maison (1946-1947), Torso self-portrait (1963-1964), and Arch of Hysteria (1993), all depict the feminine body. In the late 1960s, her imagery became more explicitly sexual as she explored the relationship between men and women and the emotional impact of her troubled childhood. Sexually explicit sculptures such as Janus Fleuri (1968) show she was not afraid to use the female form in new ways. She stated, "My work deals with problems that are pre-gender," she wrote. "For example, jealousy is not male or female." With the rise of feminism, her work found a wider audience. Despite this assertion, in 1976 Femme Maison was featured on the cover of Lucy Lippard's book From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art and became an icon of the feminist art movement.

In 1973, Bourgeois started teaching at the Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, Brooklyn College and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. From 1974 until 1977, Bourgeois worked at the School of Visual Arts in New York where she taught printmaking and sculpture. She also taught for many years in the public schools in Great Neck, Long Island.

In the early 1970s, Bourgeois held gatherings called "Sunday, bloody Sundays" at her home in Chelsea. These salons would be filled with young artists and students whose work would be critiqued by Bourgeois. Bourgeois's ruthlessness in critique and her dry sense of humor led to the naming of these meetings. Bourgeois inspired many young students to make art that was feminist in nature. However, Louise's long-time friend and assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, has stated that Louise considered her own work "pre-gender."

Bourgeois aligned herself with activists and became a member of the Fight Censorship Group, a feminist anti-censorship collective founded by fellow artist Anita Steckel. In the 1970s, the group defended the use of sexual imagery in artwork. Steckel argued, "If the erect penis is not wholesome enough to go into museums, it should not be considered wholesome enough to go into women."

In 1978 Bourgeois was commissioned by the General Services Administration to create Facets of the Sun, her first public sculpture. The work was installed outside of a federal building in Manchester, New Hampshire. Bourgeois received her first retrospective in 1982, by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Until then, she had been a peripheral figure in art whose work was more admired than acclaimed. In an interview with , timed to coincide with the opening of her retrospective, she revealed that the imagery in her sculptures was wholly autobiographical. She shared with the world that she obsessively relived through her art the trauma of discovering, as a child, that her English governess was also her father's mistress.

Between the years of 1984 and 1986, Bourgeois created a series of sculptures all under the title Nature Study which continued her lifetime commitment of challenging patriarchal standards and traditional methods of femininity in art.

Bourgeois inside her sculpture Cell IV, in 1991

In 1989, Bourgeois made a drypoint etching, Mud Lane, of the home she maintained in Stapleton, Staten Island, which she treated as a sculptural environment rather than a living space.

Bourgeois had another retrospective in 1989 at Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. In 1993, when the Royal Academy of Arts staged its comprehensive survey of American art in the 20th century, the organizers did not consider Bourgeois's work of significant importance to include in the survey. However, this survey was criticized for many omissions, with one critic writing that "whole sections of the best American art have been wiped out" and pointing out that very few women were included. In 2000 her works were selected to be shown at the opening of the Tate Modern in London. In 2001, she showed at the Hermitage Museum.

In 2010, the last year of her life, Bourgeois used her art to speak up for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender ( LGBT) equality. She created the piece I Do, depicting two flowers growing from one stem, to benefit the nonprofit organization Freedom to Marry. Bourgeois has said "Everyone should have the right to marry. To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing." Bourgeois had a history of activism on behalf of LGBT equality, having created artwork for the AIDS activist organization ACT UP in 1993.

Bourgeois died of heart failure on 31 May 2010, at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio, announced her death. She had continued to create artwork until her death, her last pieces being finished the week before.

The New York Times said that her work "shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world."

Her husband, Robert Goldwater, died in 1973. She was survived by two sons, Alain Bourgeois and Jean-Louis Bourgeois. Her first son, Michel, died in 1990.

Femme Maison (1946-47) is a series of paintings in which Bourgeois explores the relationship of a woman and the home. In the works, women's heads have been replaced with houses, isolating their bodies from the outside world and keeping their minds domestic. This theme goes along with the dehumanization of modern art.

Destruction of the Father (1974) is a biographical and a psychological exploration of the power dominance of father and his offspring. The piece is a flesh-toned installation in a soft and womb-like room. Made of plaster, latex, wood, fabric, and red light, Destruction of the Father was the first piece in which she used soft materials on a large scale. Upon entering the installation, the viewer stands in the aftermath of a crime. Set in a stylized dining room (with the dual impact of a bedroom), the abstract blob-like children of an overbearing father have rebelled, murdered, and eaten him.

... telling the captive audience how great he is, all the wonderful things he did, all the bad people he put down today. But this goes on day after day. There is tragedy in the air. Once too often he has said his piece. He is unbearably dominating although probably he does not realize it himself. A kind of resentment grows and one day my brother and I decided, 'the time has come!' We grabbed him, laid him on the table and with our knives dissected him. We took him apart and dismembered him, we cut off his penis. And he became food. We ate him up ... he was liquidated the same way he liquidated the children.[failed verification ]

In 1982, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City featured unknown artist, Louise Bourgeois' work. She was 70 years old and a mixed media artist who worked on paper and with metal, marble and animal skeletal bones. Childhood family traumas "bred an exorcism in art", and she desperately attempted to purge her unrest through her work. She felt she could get in touch with issues of female identity, the body, and the fractured family long before the art world and society considered them as subjects to be expressed in art. This was Bourgeois' way to find her center and stabilize her emotional unrest. The New York Times said at the time that "her work is charged with tenderness and violence, acceptance and defiance, ambivalence and conviction."

While in her eighties, Bourgeois produced two series of enclosed installation works she referred to as Cells. Many are small enclosures into which the viewer is prompted to peer inward at arrangements of symbolic objects; others are small rooms into which the viewer is invited to enter. In the cell pieces, Bourgeois uses earlier sculptural forms, found objects as well as personal items that carried strong personal emotional charge for the artist.

The cells enclose psychological and intellectual states, primarily feelings of fear and pain. Bourgeois stated that the Cells represent "different types of pain; physical, emotional and psychological, mental and intellectual ... Each Cell deals with a fear. Fear is pain ... Each Cell deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at."

Bourgeois's Maman sculpture at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

In the late 1990s, Bourgeois began using the spider as a central image in her art. , which stands more than nine metres high, is a steel and marble sculpture from which an edition of six bronzes were subsequently cast. It first made an appearance as part of Bourgeois's commission for The Unilever Series for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2000, and recently, the sculpture was installed at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha, Qatar. Her largest spider sculpture titled stands at over 30 feet (9.1 m) and has been installed in numerous locations around the world. It is the largest Spider sculpture ever made by Bourgeois. Moreover, Maman alludes to the strength of her mother, with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nurture and protection. The prevalence of the spider motif in her work has given rise to her nickname as Spiderwoman.

The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.

Maisons fragiles / Empty Houses

Bourgeois's Maisons fragiles / Empty Houses sculptures are parallel, high metallic structures supporting a simple tray. One must see them in person to feel their impact. They are not threatening or protecting, but bring out the depths of anxiety within you. Bachelard's findings from psychologists' tests show that an anxious child will draw a tall narrow house with no base. Bourgeois had a rocky/traumatic childhood and this could support the reason behind why these pieces were constructed.

Bourgeois's printmaking flourished during the early and late phases of her career: in the 1930s and 1940s, when she first came to New York from Paris, and then again starting in the 1980s, when her work began to receive wide recognition. Early on, she made prints at home on a small press, or at the renowned workshop Atelier 17. That period was followed by a long hiatus, as Bourgeois turned her attention fully to sculpture. It was not until she was in her seventies that she began to make prints again, encouraged first by print publishers. She set up her old press, and added a second, while also working closely with printers who came to her house to collaborate. A very active phase of printmaking followed, lasting until the artist's death. Over the course of her life, Bourgeois created approximately 1,500 printed compositions.

In 1990, Bourgeois decided to donate the complete archive of her printed work to The Museum of Modern Art. In 2013, The Museum launched the online catalogue raisonné, "Louise Bourgeois: The Complete Prints & Books." The site focuses on the artist's creative process and places Bourgeois's prints and illustrated books within the context of her overall production by including related works in other mediums that deal with the same themes and imagery.

Bourgeois's sculpture Cell XIV (Portrait) at Tate Gallery, 2016

One theme of Bourgeois's work is that of childhood trauma and hidden emotion. After Louise's mother became sick with influenza Louise's father began having affairs with other women, most notably with Sadie, Louise's English tutor. He would bring mistresses back home and be unfaithful in front of his whole family. Louise was extremely watchful and aware of the situation. This was the beginning of the artist's engagement with double standards related to gender and sexuality, which was expressed in much of her work. She recalls her father saying "I love you" repeatedly to her mother, despite infidelity. "He was the wolf, and she was the rational hare, forgiving and accepting him as he was." Her 1993 work Cell: You Better Grow Up, part of her Cell series, speaks directly to Louise's childhood trauma and the insecurity that surrounded her. 2002's Give or Take is defined by hidden emotion, representing the intense dilemma that people face throughout their lives as they attempt to balance the actions of giving and taking. This dilemma is not only represented by the shape of the sculpture, but also the heaviness of the material this piece is made of.[original research? ]

Motherhood is another recurrent theme of Bourgeois's work. It was her mother who encouraged Bourgeois to draw and who involved her in the tapestry business. Bourgeois considered her mother to be intellectual and methodical; the continued motif of the spider in her work often represents her mother. The notion of a spider that spins and weaves its web is a direct reference to her parents' tapestry business and can also be seen as a metaphor for her mother, who repairs things.

Bourgeois has explored the concept of feminity through challenging the patriarchal standards and making artwork about motherhood rather than showing women as muses or ideals. She has been described as the 'reluctant hero of feminist art'. Louise Bourgeois had a feminist approach to her work similar to fellow artists such as Agnes Martin and Eva Hesse, less driven by the political but rather made work that drew on their experiences of gender and sexuality, naturally engaging with women's issues.

Architecture and memory are important components of Bourgeois's work. Bourgeois's work are very organic, biological, reproductive feel to them; they draw attention to the work itself. Louise describes architecture as a visual expression of memory, or memory as a type of architecture. The memory which is featured in much of her work is an invented memory - about the death or exorcism of her father. The imagined memory is interwoven with her real memories including living across from a slaughterhouse and her father's affair. To Louise her father represented injury and war, aggrandizement of himself and belittlement of others and most importantly a man who represented betrayal. Her 1993 work Cell (Three White Marble Spheres) speaks to fear and captivity. The mirrors within the present an altered and distorted reality.[original research? ]

Sexuality is undoubtedly one of the most important themes in the work of Louise Bourgeois. The link between sexuality and fragility or insecurity is also powerful. It has been argued that this stems from her childhood memories and her father's affairs. 1952's Spiral Woman combines Louise's focus on female sexuality and torture. The flexing leg and arm muscles indicate that the Spiral Woman is still above though she is being suffocated and hung. 1995's In and Out uses cold metal materials to link sexuality with anger and perhaps even captivity.[original research? ]

The spiral in her work demonstrates the dangerous search for precarious equilibrium, accident-free permanent change, disarray, vertigo, whirlwind. There lies the simultaneously positive and negative, both future and past, breakup and return, hope and vanity, plan and memory.[original research? ]

Louise Bourgeois's work is powered by confessions, self-portraits, memories, fantasies of a restless being who is seeking through her sculpture a peace and an order which were missing throughout her childhood.

This collaboration took place over a span of two years with British artist Tracey Emin. The work was exhibited in London months after Bourgeois's death in 2010. The subject matter consists of male and female images. Although they appear sexual, it portrays a tiny female figure paying homage to a giant male figure, like a God. Louise Bourgeois did the water colors and Tracey Emin did the drawing on top. It took Emin two years to decide how to figure out what she would contribute in the collaboration. When she knew what to do, she finished all of the drawings in a day and believes every single one worked out perfectly. I Lost You is about losing children, losing life. Bourgeois had to bury her son as a parent. Abandonment for her is not only about losing her mother but her son as well. Despite the age gap between the two artists and differences in their work, the collaboration worked out gently and easily.[according to whom? ]

Notable exhibitions and site-specific projects (selection)

Louise Bourgeois' work continues to be exhibited in museums and public spaces through the shape of site-specific installations around the world. For example, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, has presented a collection of the artist's pieces in marble and other materials for nearly a decade.

Aranha, Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (5878031270)

The large-scale sculpture Maman, acquired by the Itaú Cultural Institute in 1996 and lent to the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Brazil, was sent on a multi-city tour to institutions and public areas such as the Inhotim Institute in Minas Gerais, the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, and then to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba.

In 2020, Bourgeois work was featured in a major group show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. My Body, My Rules, presented an investigating about the diverse artistic practices of 23 female-identified artists in the 21st-century. Carolee Schneemann, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Ana Mendieta, Wanguechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Francesca Woodman, were among them.

1967 - Untitled at National Academy of Design, New York City.

1987 - Louise Bourgeois: Sculpture 1947-1955 at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, California.

1993 - Helping Hands in permanent display at Chicago Women's Park & Gardens as of 2011, Chicago.

1994 - Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993 at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

1999 - Maman at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao.

1999 - Granite eyeball benches and 25' bronze water fountain, at Agnes R. Katz Plaza, Pittsburgh, PA. Sculptures are currently on permanent display.

2000 - Fallen Woman at Galleria d'arte moderna Palazzo Forti, Verona.

2010 - Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works, at Fondazione Vedova Venice. Travelling to Hauser & Wirth, London.

2010 - Louise Bourgeois: Mother and Child at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, California.

2011 - Louise Bourgeois. The Return of the Repressed, at Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires.Travelling to Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo and Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro.

2019 - 1999-12-03 Abels, Carolyn, "Katz Plaza in Cultural District is Dedicated," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (v73, n125, B-1)

Major holdings of her work include:

Throughout her career, Bourgeois knew many of her core collectors, such as Ginny Williams, Agnes Gund, Ydessa Hendeles and Ursula Hauser. Other private collections with notable Bourgeois pieces include the Goetz Collection in Munich.

Bourgeois started working with gallerist Paule Anglim in San Francisco in 1987, Karsten Greve in Paris in 1990, and Hauser & Wirth in 1997. Hauser & Wirth has been the principal gallery for her estate. Others, such as Kukje Gallery in Seoul and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels continue to deal in her work.

In 2011 one of Bourgeois's works, titled , sold for $10.7 million, a new record price for the artist at auction, and the highest price paid for a work by a woman at the time. In late 2015, the piece sold at another Christie's auction for $28.2 million.

Heartney, Eleanor; Posner, Helaine; Princenthal, Nancy; Scott, Sue (2007). After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art. Prestel Publishing Ltd. p. 351. ISBN 978-3-7913-4755-4.

Armstrong, Carol (2006). Women Artists at the Millennium. October Books. p. 408. ISBN 978-0-262-01226-3.

Herskovic, Marika (2003). American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s: An Illustrated Survey. New York School Press. p. 372. ISBN 978-0-9677994-1-4.

Herskovic, Marika (2000). New York School: Abstract Expressionists. New York School Press. p. 393. ISBN 978-0-9677994-0-7.

Deepwell, Katy (May 1997). Deepwell, Katy (ed.). "Feminist Readings of Louise Bourgeois or Why Louise Bourgeois is a Feminist Icon". N.paradoxa. London: KT Press (3): 28-38. ISSN 1461-0426.

Wasilik, Jeanne M. (1987). Assemblage. Kent Fine Art, Inc. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-878607-15-7.

Louise Bourgeois in The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: https://www.mfah.org/blogs/inside-mfah/a-confessional-sculpture-by-louise-bourgeois

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( Louise Joséphine Bourgeois ( French: [lwiz buʁʒwa] listen ); 25 December 1911 - 31 May 2010)[1] was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker.

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Ecclesiastes 1:2
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 2:11
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2:17
So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:26
For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:4
Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 6:9
Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

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Transpecies artist working with live performance and installation.

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EWTN is a global, Catholic Television, Catholic Radio, and Catholic News Network that provides catholic programming and news coverage from around the world.

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Dear Gillian,

"It was interesting to see your work regarding light in a beach-like setting. I think the piece where the light slowly approaches you works best, where you’re almost invisible. The story you told about the fall was also intriguing. That we were light before the fall, if I remember correctly. Is that right? You’re working on different projects. I’ll list the key elements again here:"

Concerning light, I think the legend of the ‘will-o-the-wisp’ might be interesting:

https://folklorescotland.com/will-o-the-wisp/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp#:~:text=The%20will%2Do'%2Dthe%2Dwisp%20was%20also%20known%20as,unwary%20travellers%20to%20their%20doom.

Gillian also check out Mona Hatoum. She uses endoscopic footage of her own internal organs, soundtracked by her heartbeat, this might feel very intimate. We’re being given access to the inside of Hatoum’s body.

https://fourthree.boilerroom.tv/film/mona-hatoum-corps-etranger-1994/

Keywords:

# divine,

# sublime,

# light,

# religion,

# mortal limitation,

# human struggle on a collective and personal level.

# What moves us, what lays in our hearts, which stories are we repeating? How do all these things relate to space and image?

#visit religious spaces

# people relationship with spirituality in their everyday life.

# use the university’s resources as part of my research, too.

# I seek to learn about these topics drawing from history, contemporary challenges, personal experience, religious texts, academic research, poetry and imagery. Rather than focusing on concrete results, I want to use the next semester to be lead by curiosity, gathering input and creating intuitively. I hope that this will create fertile ground to start the 4th year with

# I want to work on my poetic ability (in words and visually). I am hoping to achieve this through an intuitive practice in print-making, making drypoint prints. For this, I will spend an entire afternoon once a week in the printing workshop. I want to write as much as I can, be it prose, poems or essays.

# Additionally, I want to allow myself time to browse through art books, to go for long walks, read poetry. I want to dedicate time to muse, to wander and to sit still. I’ve been learning poems by heart again, reciting them.

# want to film my performance “Hiding in light” (working title). For this performance I will rent two very bright battery-charged LED lamps to hang onto myself.

Sources:

Gillian, Levi Strauss has intriguing quote on myth and tragedy:

“The disaster always originates in the circumstance that a human being fails to fulfil his or her proper obligations towards a deity or a kinsman, and this […] is what Levi-Strauss is getting at when he insists that the fundamental moral implication of mythology is that […] self-interest is the source of all evil”. In Levi-Strauss, Edmund Leach, p. 80

BJA

#There is a relation between fall with regard to Bas Jan Ader and the domestic fall.

Bas Jan Ader talks about letting go of control, that it is inevitable that we cannot control everything. Also, look at his Nightfall:

https://www.facebook.com/earways/videos/nightfall-bas-jan-ader/637824923066029/

For Bas Jan, the fall was also about tragedy and the impossibility of having complete control. Bas Jan Ader:

"I have always been fascinated by tragedy. It is also present in falling—the fall is failure. […]Everything is tragic because humans always lose control—over processes, over matter, over their own emotions. I have a deep appreciation for the beauty of tragedy; that is the tragic. The tragedy of tragedy—doubly so.”

Gillian: The Glass essay might be interesting for you (nice connection with glass), also the genre of the lyrical essay.

Another great example is Bluets by Maggie Nelson (especially read from statement 158 ​​about god light and darkness). The links to the books are in the text The Lyrical Essay. See:

TheLyricEssay .pdf

What strikes me is that both Carson and Maggie write in a bodily way, and Nelson even ironizes Wittgenstein's tractatus a bit. Like his book, it is numbered with short texts, but with Maggie, it’s more about the bodily experience than a mental quest for a logically clear language like Wittgenstein’s.

Gillian, See in relation to light, finitude, infinity, good and evil,

Breaking of the Vessels van Anselm Kiefer: Good and bad  10 vases  light chaos https://www.jmberlin.de/en/core-exhibition-13-objects-shevirat-ha-kelim

Gillian: Regarding stained glass windows, it might be interesting to look at modernism with, for example, van Doesburg and the utopian ideals they had with it. See (especially Bruno Taut is interesting):

https://open.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=archetecture_pubs

https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/craft/heart-of-stained-glass-divinity-and-wealth-in-windows

https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/2cc11dec-5564-45a9-90bb-288638bcd369/content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSyYCBGgpE

Gillian: The Polish philosopher Kolakowski might also be interesting for you. He wrote about religion in modern society in a very unique way.

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/06/settling-scores-god-leszek-kolakowski-end-of-history-poland

Furthermore, Stangneth and Marilyn Robinson could also be interesting.

https://www.abc-web.be/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/01_2013_Is_God_Happy.pdf

Robinson

https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/marilynne-robinson-goes-deep-genesis

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“The Absent Body (and Beyond)” by Drew Leder (Keywords: Dualism; Mind-Body; Self; Illness; Healing)

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“The Platonic/Cartesian formulation captures an abiding element of human experience; the body can be a prison from which we long to be free”

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Moving images are used as diagnostic tools and locational devices every day in hospitals, clinics, and laboratories. But how and when did they come to be established and accepted sources of knowledge about the body in medical culture? How are the specialized techniques and codes of these imaging techniques determined, and whose bodies are studied, diagnosed, and treated with the help of optical recording devices?Screening the Body traces the fascinating history of scientific film during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to show that early experiments with cinema are important precedents of contemporary medical techniques such as ultrasound and PET scanning. Lisa Cartwright brings to light eccentric projects in the history of science and medicine, such as Thomas Edison’s sensational attempt to image the brain with X rays before a public audience, and the efforts of doctors to use the motion picture camera to capture movements of the body, from the virtually imperceptible flow of blood to epileptic seizures.Drawing on feminist film theory, cultural studies, the history of film, and the writings of Foucault, Cartwright illustrates how this scientific cinema was part of a broader tendency in society toward the technological surveillance, management, and physical transformation of the individual body and the social body. She unveils an area of film culture that has rarely been discussed but that will leave readers with a new way of seeing the everyday practice of diagnostic imaging that we all inevitably encounter in clinics and hospitals.

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Screening The Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture

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Moving images are used as diagnostic tools and location…

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The economic and political management of human populations through their exposure to death has become a global phenomenon. Wars, genocides, refugee "crisis", ecocide and contemporary processes of pauperization and precarization reveal how increasing masses of individuals are now governed through their direct and indirect exposure to death. In order to unpack those processes, Achille Mbembe came up with the notion of necropolitics, first in 2003 with an essay bearing the same name, and then in 2016, with the book Politiques de l'inimiti é, translated and published in English in 2019, as Necropolitics. With this latter notion, Mbembe explores and radicalizes Foucault's concept of biopolitics.

In the last lecture of "Society must be Defended" and in the last chapter of The History of Sexuality (Vol.1), Foucault noticed how biopolitics, that is, the positive power over life can become a deadly form of power. It is not only a "calculated management of life" but also a "power to expose a whole population to death". Drawing on the dramatic experiences of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes and on the global nuclear threat, Foucault highlighted how human masses are eliminated in the name of the protection and survival of a nation, a people and/or a class. Besides, he noted how racism has become the political tool that enables the biological division of the human species and the justification of the extermination of those considered inferior. Foucault insisted modern racism has developed with the "colonizing genocide", so that the right to take life could be justified. Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have explored these foucauldian observations with the notions of " homo saccer" and " thanatopolitics", insisting respectively on the sovereign right to kill with impunity and the biological/pathological justifications of humans' exterminations. Mbembe's necropolitics offers a novel approach as it draws both on Foucault and a decolonial approach (often inspired in Frantz Fanon) and conceives of necropolitics as the political making of spaces and subjectivities in an in-between of life and death. The colony in general and the slavery plantation in particular have given birth to those necropolitical practices - fostered by white supremacy - that still continue today.

The subjugation of life to the power of death

Necropolitics entails the "subjugation of life to the power of death". In "our contemporary world" - following Mbembe - various types of "weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjugated to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living-dead". This production of " death-worlds" is carried on by three main factors I will define subsequently. On the one hand, necropolitics entails a necroeconomy. Modern capitalism would produce nowadays an excess of populations that could not be exploited anymore but require to be managed precisely through their exposure to deadly dangers and risks. The so-called "climate crisis" is maybe the most illustrative example of this necroeconomy, along with the current destruction of public/social goods and rights. On the other hand, necropolitics draws on the confinement of certain populations in particular spaces: campsites. Relying on Agamben's insights, Mbembe holds that the camp-form (refugees, prisons, banlieues, suburbs, favelas) has become a prevailing way of governing unwanted populations. The latter are enclosed in precarious and militarized spaces so that they can be controlled, harassed and potentially killed. It is "a permanent condition of 'living in pain' ".

The third and "key characteristic" of necropolitics is " to produce death in a large scale". This aspect is developed, in particular, in a subpart untitled "Relation Without Desire" from the First Chapter "Exit From Democracy" of Necropolitics (2019). It is possible to explain this characteristic, highlighting seven traits that, according to my understanding, seem to underpin Mbembe's account on the issue.

1) State terror: The State persecutes, imprisons and eliminates certain populations so that political and social contestations can be neutralized. Those repressive tactics are operated not only by totalitarian regimes but also by contemporary liberal and illiberal countries.

2) The shared use of violence: In many cases, the State does not have and willingly shares the monopoly of violence with other private actors (i.e. militias, paramilitary), increasing the circulation and use of weapons in society. The latter is therefore divided between "those who are protected (because armed) from those who are not".

3) The "link of enmity": According to Mbembe, in a society where the possession and nonpossessions of weapons define one's social value, all social bonds are destroyed. The link of enmity normalizes therefore the "idea that power can be acquired and exercised only at the price of another's life".

4) War: "Coercion itself has become a market commodity". Nowadays, war and terror have become modes of production on their own, and as such need to generate new military markets.

5) The predation of natural resources: In order to exploit valuable natural resources, populations are displaced and eliminated (i.e. indigenous people in the Amazon rain forest) though the active and hidden collaboration of the State, public forces, international corporations and criminal organizations.

6) Different modes of killing: The exposure to death is multiple: tortures, mutilations, mass killings, high-tech elimination through "drone strikes" represent various modalities of necropolitical devices.

7) Different moral justifications: According to Mbembe, atrocities are justified for various reasons such as the eradication of corruption, different types of "therapeutic liturgy", "the desire for sacrifice", "messianic eschatologies", and even "modern discourses of utilitarianism, materialism, and consumerism".

Necropolitics implies therefore a closed entrenchment of political, economic and military devices, oriented towards the eliminations of human populations. But along with this aspect, necropolitics is also deployed through "small doses" of death that structure the everyday life of individuals.

Less human than human

Along with mass killings and exterminations, Mbembe argues that necropolitics implies a surveillance on individuals not so much for the purposes of discipline, but to extract from them a maximum of utility, such as in the case of sexual slavery. The instillation of those in the daily existences of many individuals also comes from "unbounded social, economic, and symbolic violence" that destroy their bodies and the value of their social existence. Daily humiliations perpetrated by public forces on certain populations, the strategy of "small massacres" inflicted one day at a time, and the absence of basic social goods (e.g. sanitation, housing) bring about a kind of existence whose value "is the sort of death able to be inflicted upon it". Under those circumstances, necropolitics consists

in the power to manufacture an entire crowd of people who specifically live at the edge of life, or even on its outer edge - people for whom living means continually standing up to death .... This life is a superfluous one, therefore, whose price is so meager that it has no equivalence, whether market or - even less - human .... Nobody even bears the slightest feelings of responsibility or justice towards this sort of life or, rather, death. Necropolitical power proceeds by a sort of inversion between life and death, as if life was merely death's medium.

Under everyday necropolitics, a mass of populations live under extreme precarious conditions and as such, can be exploited and eliminated "naturally". Mbembe singles out racism as the main criteria that allow necropolitics to be performed and expand in society. Along with an "hydraulic racism" that defines institutional racism (State, law, administration), Mbembe pays attention to a so-called "nanoracism" that is deployed in everyday social relations, and is designed to stigmatize, to injure and to humiliate "those not considered to be one of us". Taking into account current political, social and symbolic forms of violence that are deployed worldwide, Mbembe's notion of necropolitics represents a relevant heuristic category for contemporary critical thought.
Antonio Pele is an Associate Professor at the Law School of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.

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The economic and political management of human populations through their exposure to death has become a global phenomenon. Wars, genocides, refugee "crisis", ecocide and contemporary processes of pauperization and precarization reveal how increasing masses of individuals are now governed through their direct and indirect exposure to death.

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Hans Bellmer. Plate from La Poupée. 1936 | MoMA

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Hans Bellmer. Plate from La Poupée. 1936. Gelatin silver print. 4 5/8 × 3″ (11.7 × 7.6 cm). Purchase. 9.1994.6. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Illustrated Book. Photography

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Projects:

#Theater project organised by Gaja Caruso at 2NITE/30 people/ create a dance performance from scratch in an entirely non-hierarchical manner – Script, Costume, Makeup, Scenography, Lighting, Music, Choreography, Directing –

responsible for scenography and script writing in particular.

#Erasmus Crafts and Sustainability Antwerp’s Blikfabrik from March 22nd until March 19th.  reuse old glass.

#various glass techniques, including mold blowing.

scoby leather in the coming weeks.

#research of light and flesh

# Within the grid, three small stained glass windows will be hung. prototype for my graduation project.

# performer in the research of Sofia Murillo’s graduation project on ‘Becoming Aquatic’ – We swim, we breathe, we feel… and we do that meeting once a week since March 7th.

# Exam phase at RUG –European Law; Methodology and Research practice and Arabic Language.

#SYB – being silent and researching the fall with Shervin. We will make a small booklet out of our insights.

# reading Hannah Arendt’s “The banality of evil”; writing some more texts on my research topic and general reflections on god and faith…

# More doing, less thinking. Less planning, more playing. Less desk, more frolicking in fields.

# “Hiding in light”. video material at the Bas Jan Ader exhibition in the Koeplzaal. For that I also want to convert an overhead projector to be able to project digital video.

Finishing:

These are the things I would like to achieve next block. I guess a parameter of accessing success is whether they have been done, or not

-       Finish the glass sculpture with Scoby leather

-       Finish the metal frame and the windows inside them

-       Try your best for the Theatre project; write the script and build scenography as needed

-       Try your best for Sofia’s project; perform for graduation

-       Make the booklet with Shervin about our Syb residency

-       Record the performance with Linn in Ameland

-          Convert an overhead projector to project a digital screen

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qbit to adam

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Chan Sook Choi - Museum für moderne und zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin, Fotografie, Architektur, Künstler-Archive, Dada Berlin, Neue Sachlichkeit und Osteuropäische Avantgarde.

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Why God, why God do I gotta bleed?
Every stone thrown at you restin' at my feet

(FEAR; Kendrick lamar)

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"Similarly, on the stepped white marble architrave of the ossuary at the most grandiose of the final burial sites for the Italian war dead (at Redipuglia, where over 100,000 bodies were eventually buried), the word ‘PRESENT’ was carved over and over again in a kind of roll call of the dead."

As Gentile points out, the culminating moment of the funeral ceremony was the roll call in which ‘one of the leaders of the squad would call out the dead man’s name, and the crowd, on its knees, bellowed ‘Present!’.65

Above the names of dead heroes in the ‘Martyrs Sanctuary’ at the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in Italy the word PRESENT! was repeated, and a metal cross was inscribed with the phrase ‘per la patria immortale! (For the Immortal Fatherland!)’.

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The Denial of Death is a 1973 book by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker which discusses the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death.[1] The author argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death.[2]

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The Cathedral of Light was a main aesthetic feature of the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg starting in 1933. It consisted of 130 anti-aircraft searchlights, at intervals of 12 meters, aimed skyward to create a series of vertical bars surrounding the audience. The effect was a brilliant one, both from within the design and on the outside. The cathedral of light was documented in the Nazi Propaganda film Festliches Nürnberg, released in 1937.

The Lichtdom was the brainchild of Albert Speer, who was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to design and organise the Nuremberg Parade Grounds for the annual celebrations. It is still considered amongst Speer's most important works. The location of the rallies was the Zeppelinfeld, built for more than 300,000 participants as part of a massive complex specifically made for those events.

Speer described the effect: "The feeling was of a vast room, with the beams serving as mighty pillars of infinitely light outer walls". The British Ambassador to Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson, described it as "both solemn and beautiful... like being in a cathedral of ice". William L. Shirer, an American journalist in Berlin during 1934 wrote: "I'm beginning to comprehend some of the reasons for Hitler's success. He is restoring pageantry and color and mysticism to the drab lives of 20th century Germans".

The searchlights were borrowed from the Luftwaffe, which caused problems with its commander Hermann Göring, because they represented most of Germany's strategic reserve. Hitler overruled him, suggesting that it was a useful piece of disinformation. "If we use them in such large numbers for a thing like this, other countries will think we're swimming in searchlights".

When the war began the lights were used for highlighting enemy airplanes so that the flak could easily shoot them down at night. Being spotted by such a searchlight usually was a death sentence for an allied bomber. Those used at this event had a range of about ten to twelve kilometers.

Technical aspects of the lights: Developed in the late 1930s, the Flak Searchlight-34 and -37 used 150-centimeter-diameter parabolic glass reflectors with an output of 990 million candelas. The system was powered by a 24-kilowatt generator, based around a 51-horsepower (38 kW) 8-cylinder engine, giving a current of 200 amperes at 110 volts. The searchlight was attached to the generator by a cable 200 meters long. The system had a detection range of about 8 kilometers for targets at an altitude of between 4,000 and 5,000 meters. The system could be made mobile using two sets of Special Trailer 104 units, one for the searchlight and one for the generator. It required a crew of seven people to operate it.

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The Cathedral of Light of the Nazi rallies, 1937

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The Cathedral of Light was a main aesthetic feature of the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg starting in 1933. It consisted of 130 anti-aircraft searchlights, at intervals of 12 meters, aimed skyward to create a series of vertical bars surrounding the audience. The effect was a brilliant one, both from within the design and on the outside.