30 November 2023 Thursday
From Human Rights Watch:
Russia: Supreme Court Bans “LGBT Movement” as “Extremist” -- Russian LGBT Community in Dire Need of International Support
First paragraph: "Russia’s Supreme Court ruled today that the “international LGBT movement” is an “extremist organization,” jeopardizing all forms of LGBT rights activism in the country, Human Rights Watch said today."
I have no idea as to whether The Timepiece of Humanity is still on display within the Star Vengeance exhibition at GES-2 House of Culture, Moscow, but, if it is still there, it fully supports LGBTQ+ rights.
2023.10.19
[unedited night notes]
Turns out Putin is 3 months and 3 days older than my brother, (which means Putin is almost 3 1/2 years older than me). Not much of a difference there, but I don't suppose Putin's parents were forced to spend 5 years, each, in a Soviet labor concentration camp in Southern Ukraine 1945-1949.
The "International LGBT Movement" does exist, and, for the next 5 months of so, The Timepiece of Humanity is its HQ.
The only "traditional value" that I see the Russian government's outlawing of any cultural expression that can be construed as supporting LGBTQ+ rights defending is the tradition of the Russian government abusing the lives of others.
Trust me, I never expected (do be doing) any of this, nor has there ever been an aspiration (on my part) to do something like this, but, now that I am doing all this, its like the drive and motivation are completely natural, innate even.
"The Trojan Horse is just like Pandora's Box."
Art that can be construed as supporting LGBTQ+ rights
snap of the last one 1 added to 2 added to 3 2021.11.30
Art that can be construed as supporting LGBTQ+ rights
 
Stephen Lauf
In Case You Didn't Get It
2002.11.30
digital diptych
dimensions variable
2002.11.30
Re: positioning Étant donnés [wavelengths]
I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) Library two Tuesdays ago, but alas that is not the place to conduct research regarding Duchamp's involvement vis-à-vis the Arensberg collection and its ultimate residing within the PMA. The Museum Archives is the place to do the research, but it just so happens that the Museum Archives have just begun the large project of organizing all the Arensberg/Duchamp archived material. [Do some people at the PMA read the Duchamp online bulletin board? I know that at last d'Harnoncourt reads Tout Fait.] Nonetheless, I did find out that the rooms that now accommodate Étant donnés and the visitors/viewers quarters were storage rooms before--at least that's what an older librarian(?) at the PMA remembers.
At this point, for me at least, it seems reasonable to believe that Duchamp was well aware of the (future Étant donnés) space at the PMA while he was secretly working on Étant donnés in NY, and that quite possibly this knowledge made it easier to work "underground" since what he was doing was already going to be a museum piece.
If Étant donnés is Duchamp's great underground work, is his activity at the PMA, especially his organizing of his own works within the museum, Duchamp's great above-ground work of the same period?
The original printing of the PMA Bulletin of 1969 that introduced Étant donnés contains a forward where "Dr. Evan Turner described the long relationship between Marcel Duchamp and the PMA..." [I have yet to read this text.]
Chapter 18 of Triumph on Fairmount: Fiske Kimball and The Philadelphia Museum of Art (1959) is entitled "The Arensbergs" and comprises a series of letters by Kimball that describe each of his visits with the Arensbergs in LA.
Entertaining anecdote from Triumph on Fairmount, p. 299:
"The next day, Ingersoll was in the Arensberg galleries when Fiske came in with Perry Rathbone, the new director of the Boston Museum.
This is the 'big glass,'" he said, pointing to a large shattered pane of glass decorated with oil paint and lead wire in abstract patterns, which was mounted on a stand in front of the window looking out on the courtyard. "Duchamp called it The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even." He laughed and went on in a loud voice to make several vulgar remarks.
"Fiske, you cannot talk like that here. Remember you are in a public place." "I'll talk as I please," said Fiske. "You aren't my boss any more."
Rathbone did not know what to make of this passage, for it was not until the following Tuesday, January 25, 1955 that Fiske's resignation was published."
Museum Studies 6.2: on any given January 19 go stand in front of The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even and laugh and make several vulgar remarks.
1994.11.30
214.
I'm not sure if I already mentioned this, but it is beginning to seem as if I could begin to describe a new sort of developed human being. I don't want to say a new Übermensch, but in light of the heart and 100% osmosis (for example), it is very easy to imagine a type of human being that is different than human beings are right now. With the heart and especially the neck, I have good reason to wonder if these points in the body are also future points of heightened human development.
215.
Here are definitions of, and synonymous references to experience:
1. experience - 2: direct observation of or participation in events: an encountering, undergoing or living through things in general as they take place in the course of time.
2. experience - 8 (philosophical) a: the act or process of perceiving or apprehending «experience is a matter of the interaction of organisms with its environment, an environment that is human as well as physical, that includes the materials of tradition and institutions as a well as local surroundings - John Dewey» c: the discriminative reaction or the nonconscious response of an organism to events or happenings within its environment.
I like the definitions of experience very much and I feel more confident in calling the Timepiece a chart of all humanity's experience.
216.
Now in talking on the phone with Sue Dixon the last two nights, a lot of new insight has come to light. This note will try to relate all the various ideas that we discussed, and in turn many of these points will be discussed in depth in subsequent notes.
I started by asking Sue if there is an historiographical term describing/explaining the concept that every time there is a major change/occurrence in history there is an equal/symmetrical ending of something that is of equal weight and importance. I explained to Sue that I was beginning to see that just such a conceptual process is almost like standard operating procedure in the Timepiece.
She replied that she could not off hand say that such a conceptual approach has a name, or even if the concept itself has any presence in current or past historiographical discourse, however, she did relay a teaching experience (a medieval history course I believe) that quite often when she was presenting a new direction and/or major breakthrough in Medieval art, the students would want to know what happened to the old guard. She mentioned that it actually became trendy for students to ask such questions.
I went on to talk about other aspects of the Timepiece like the circle/square junctures, but I spoke specifically about 1492 occurring at the very end of the upper hip bones (the end of the line for the legs and feet, and the last outer skeletal structure until right around now--c.2000 AD--with the arrival of the lower tips of the rib cage). I told Sue basically what I wrote in note 206. The year 1492 rang a bell in her head about some occurrence in the Middle East, and then remembered she was thinking about the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. (The Turks final assault on Constantinople began May 29, 1453.) With the Timepiece in mind, I made the connection of the ultimate end of the Roman Empire, the closing of the east to Europeans, and the opening of the West (namely the Americas).
On the second night of conversation, Sue corrected the date of the fall of Constantinople from 1492 to 1453, but went on to mention that the Turks by 1492 were busy taking over the Balkans, specifically Bosnia and Herzegovina, areas of the world that are today very much in the news. My immediate response was "the bones are coming back." I was referring to the present (c.2000 AD) appearance of the very bottom tips of the rib cage--the first appearance of an outer skeletal structure since the ending of the hip bones in c. 1492).
I will now add some extended thoughts to this interesting symmetry of events. I find it interesting that there is a strong geographical unity between where the hip bones end and where the rib cage begins. Thinking about this coincidence gives one a good bit to go on when thinking about the future and the time to come as the rib cage manifests into its full realization. This hip/rib connection especially brings to mind my personal idea/observation that in one's own creative development, one has to always begin where one left off, and that this idea holds true no matter how long an interval of inactivity there may have been. I'm not going to belabor this point any further except to say that it does help along the story of the Timepiece, and especially the fact that in looking at the Timepiece one can see both the past and the future.
217.
On the second night of my conversation with Sue Dixon we talked mainly about Piranesi, and especially his role as a proto-metabolic thinker/designer/etc. In the previous nights conversation we discussed the plurality and the assimilation/metabolism mix of our present time (see note 201). While thinking during the day between our two conversations, it dawned on me more clearly that that some physical manifestation of metabolism has been around since the appearance of the kidneys (from 1700 to 1800) (again see note 201). It also dawned on me that Piranesi spans exactly the same period as the beginning of metabolism.
I asked Sue if she would agree that what Piranesi did (especially) in the Ichnographia of the Campo Marzio was to metabolize Roman architecture. After Sue asked me to again define metabolism, she then wholeheartedly agreed that metabolizing was exactly what Piranesi was doing, but not only in the Campo Marzio. Sue immediately talked about Piranesi's chimney pieces and candelabra as designs composed through a breaking down and re-combination of many disparate historical elements.
To further the discussion and as an aside, I mentioned that I believe that the early modern movement in architecture falls much more in the camp of assimilation (absorption and purging), and that only in some (perhaps rare) cases did modern architecture reach the metabolic camp, e.g., I believe Le Corbusier's late architecture is a prime example of how an architect can make the transition from assimilation to metabolism.
Art that can be construed as supporting LGBTQ+ rights
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