I wonder if Klee, Schendel and
Godard are together
On the other side, sharing thoughts
On existence or death?
Take Klee’s Creative Confession
And stir almost every line from Alphaville; use Mira’s recipe for Brazilian alphabet soup..Voilá,
A taste of something
Extraordinary yet familiar
Their attempt to put
Eternity in the palm of
Our hand.
References:
Tate Modern – Paul Klee exhibition
Extract from Klee’s Creative Confession:
“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible….Formerly we used to represent things which were visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other latent realities….Art is a simile of Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as the terrestrial is an example of the cosmic…Art plays an unknowing game with ultimate things, and yet achieves them.”
Also at Tate Modern – Mira Schendal exhibition
Mira’s explanation of her work ‘Still Waves of Possibility’ (installation of thin, almost transparent fibres)
“The visibility of the invisible, that is, of things that are in action, but without our being able to see them, such as the laws of physics or physical processes…..be faithfully of this world. And yet not to be of this world. With all its love and joy and also the inevitable suffering, with devotions and without illusions.”
The fibres hang opposite an extract from the Old Testament, Book of Kings:
“And he said, ‘Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord’. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice”
Curator’s blurb: “Schendel saw her work as activating the void, thus posed between being and nothingness…
Umwelt – environment
Mitwelt – social world
Eigenwelt – inner world”.
Guy Brett, art critic, on her ‘little nothings’ or Droguinas’: “Their fragility and Energy indicate Space as a natural thing – a field of possibility”.
Film, Alphaville, Directed and written by Jean-Luc Goddard.
My favourite quotes:
ALPHA 60 (An intelligent computer): “Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along. But I am time. It’s a tiger, tearing me apart; but I am the tiger”
ALPHA 60: “Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world.”
ALPHA 60: “Time is like a circle which is endlessly described. The declining arc is the past. The inclining arc is the Future.”
Vonbraun: “Life and Death share the same circle.”
ALPHA 60: “Everything has been said, provided words do not change their meanings, and meanings change their words.”
ALPHA 60: “Once we know the number one, we believe we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget we first must know the meaning of plus.”
Vonbraun: reading extract from surrealist poet Paul Eluard – from his book: Capitale de la Douleur:
“We live in the limbo of our metamorphoses.
But the echo which runs through all the day
That echo beyond time, desire and caresses keeps asking…
Are we close to or far away from our conscience?”
A great article on the film and its influences:
Being Every Day 