Circe Wants to Keep Everything

Clever Circe, the enchantress who bewitches... and for what reason? She wants a Tower. A Tower so high that it can contain all knowledge. A Tower where Circe can keep the secrets and legends of every creature in the Universe. Her galactic library has no equal. From the dawn of time when clay tables were replaced by parchment, which was then replaced by print, then by videos. Circe wants to keep everything, to know everything. No spacecraft can escape the tower's gravitational pull. Once caught they remain here forever.

What happens to the crew?

The Thousand Spells of Circe keep them as slaves. They give her their knowledge and she gives them the power to forget the past. They place stone upon stone for her and so the Tower grows and grows.

- Ulysses 31

Souvenirs From the Ten Month Dream: Sustained by the Mysterious Vapor of Imagination

However, as souvenirs remembrances are still susceptible to diverse modes of reception, which refetishize them into a wide array of meanings, according to the consumers'—and the market's—needs. Outstanding among these is the notion that an object is capable of transcending the limits of its own signification to represent, partially or fully, the whole event that gave it birth. Souvenirs, for example, condense the supposedly founding elements of a particular situation: a certain landscape or view, a famous person, the "typical" objects of a craft or region, an important moment.

- The Souvenir, Celeste Olalquiaga

The hidden door that leads to paradise opens in a place without fissures where everything radiates, sustained by the mysterious vapor of imagination. It is inhabited by unicorns and charming princes. Without realizing it, time suddenly folds like a fan: the enormous red roses obscurely begin to putrefy, the ethereal bodies hang like golden skeletons, and the trees are invaded by stuffed birds and snakes whose skins short-circuit with every kiss. A girl escapes in terror, taking cover under the dry leaves and the barbed wire. She pretends she is an impenetrable rock, concealing herself so she can never be touched, and always longed for.

- The Pandemoniac Junk Shop of Solitude: Kitsch and Death, Celeste Olalquiaga

The World, Unfortunately, Is Real

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Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.

- Other Inquisitions

The Faustian Flight

Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

- Goethe

I Am As You Will Be: The Skeleton in Art

From the Press Release:

Cheim & Read is pleased to announce I Am As You Will Be, a group exhibition of more than thirty works which incorporate the skeleton as subject.

The works in this exhibition are inherently connected to a long history of the skeleton’s artistic representation, and are emblematic of human nature’s ongoing and understandably invested interest in mortality. In his essay for the exhibition catalogue, Tricot summarizes the history of this representation, as well as the skeleton’s appearance in science, literature and philosophy. Hidden but intrinsic to all living beings, the revealed skeleton has long been a harbinger of imminent death, directing the destinies of souls. It has appeared in its iconic, nightmarish uniform of black cape and scythe, has danced naked in a medieval jumble of bones (the “danse macabre”), and has waited patiently, skull-only, on the side table of a vanitas painting, with a vase of wilting flowers and a half-empty hour glass. Repeated, abstracted, and stylized through out history, the skeleton indicates the inevitable passing of time and ultimately mocks the fruitless hope for immortality.

Via the always enlightening gmtPlus 9 (-15)