1995 – I watched this go out. So glad I found it again.
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Silva rerum
“In historical Poland [silva rerum] was written by members of the Polish nobility as a diary or memoir for the entire family, recording family traditions, among other matters; they were not intended for a wider audience of printing (although there were a few exceptions); some were also lent to friends of the family, who were allowed to add their comments to them. It was added to by many generations, and contained various information: diary-type entires on current events, memoirs, letters, political speeches, copies of legal documents, gossips, jokes and anecdotes, financial documents, economic information (price of grain, etc.), philosophical musings, poems, genealogical trees, advice (agricultural, medical, moral) for the descendants and others – the wealth of information in silva is staggering, they contain anything that their authors wished to record for future generations).”
Language of the Birds
– Report On The Construction Of Situations 1957
“A revolutionary action within culture must aim to enlarge life, not merely to express or explain it. It must attack misery on every front. Revolution is not limited to determining the level of industrial production, or even to determining who is to be the master of such production. It must abolish not only the exploitation of humanity, but also the passions, compensations and habits which that exploitation has engendered. We have to define new desires in relation to present possibilities. In the thick of the battle between the present society and the forces that are going to destroy it, we have to find the first elements of a more advanced construction of the environment and new conditions of behavior — both as experiences in themselves and as material for propaganda. Everything else belongs to the past, and serves it.”
The Common Good.
“Take a walk through any big city. Do you see anything that needs improvement? There are huge amounts of work to be done, and lots of idle hands. People would be delighted to do the work, but the economic system is such a catastrophe it can’t put them to work.
The country’s awash in capital. Corporations have so much money they don’t know what to do with it – it’s coming out of their ears. There’s no scarcity in funds – these aren’t “lean and mean” times. That’s just a fraud.”
STORY OF GENKI??? by David O’Reilly (2011)
“Commitment,”
“Art is not a matter of pointing up alternatives but rather of resisting, solely through artistic form, the course of the world, which continues to hold a pistol to the heads of human beings.”
Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi
Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side)
“Designer Olympia Le-Tan’s embroidered clutch-bags spring to life in director Spike Jonze’s tragicomic stop-motion animation Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side). On a shelf in famed Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, the star-crossed love story of a klutzy skeleton and his flame-haired amour plays out amidst Le-Tan’s illustrations of iconic first-edition book covers. “It’s such a beautiful and romantic place,” offers Le-Tan of the antiquarian bookstore. “The perfect setting for our story!” The project started after Jonze asked for a Catcher in the Ryeembroidery to put on his wall and the plucky Le-Tan asked for a film in return. Enlisting French filmmaker Simon Cahn to co-direct, the team wrote the script between Los Angeles and Paris over a six month period, before working night and day animating the 3,000 pieces of felt Le-Tan had cut by hand. “I love getting performances from, telling stories about and humanizing things that aren’t human,” said Jonze of working with Le-Tan’s characters. After spending five years adapting Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze’s recent shorts include robot love story I’m Here and an inspired G.I. Joe-starring video for The Beastie Boys. “A short is like a sketch,” he says. “You can have an idea or a feeling and just go and do it.” Here the iconic director reveals his creative process to writer Maryam L’Ange.”
The Vallard Atlas
From BibliOdyssey:
- “It was (anonymously) produced by the Dieppe school (France) in 1547 and was either copied from Portuguese maps or was completed with the input of (a) Portuguese cartographer(s)
- The maps are known as portolan (navigational) charts [previously]
- Unusually, north is shown at the bottom of the maps in the style of Muslim cartographers (very rare in European Christian mapping)
- Allegedly, this atlas shows the first ever European record of Australian coastline — some 250 years ahead of Capt. Cook and 60-odd years before the earliest official European discovery/sighting/mapping of any Australian coastline by William Janszoon in 1606 [see: Landing List].<
- The miniatures and marginalia depict 16th century native and colonisation scenes
- The first[?] use of the name “Canada” in a map “
See lots more at BibliOdyssey.
Paul Greer 