Monday, December 20, 2010

Nietzschean Eternal Return

eternelle retour à Gaga

Friday, December 17, 2010

sensus communis

"We must [here] take sensus communis to mean the idea of a shared [by us all], ie, a power to judge that in reflecting takes account (a priori) in our thought of everyone else's way of presenting [something] in order as it were to compare our own judgment with human reason in others, and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everyone else...
(Immanuel Kant, Critique on the Judgment, 1790)

Thursday, December 9, 2010

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embrassez mon coeur.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

other. in-between. border.

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(Lady Gaga posing with a dildo in her pants, for Q Magazine photo shoot)

The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Zeigfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.
(Mulvey, Laura, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1973)

Sunday, December 5, 2010

reflexion

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— what separates the woman with whom I have spent most of my life or my closest friends from others whose paths have crossed mine for shorter or more scattered times, Proust from Rex Stout, Moby-Dick from The Old Man and the Sea and Jaws, Manet from Magritte, is less the kind of feelings they inspire in me than their complexity and the long-term effect of our relationship. I don’t need to spend the rest of time with every beautiful person or thing I am aware of — and sometimes I resist any desire to do so — but if I do find something beautiful I do more than simply throw a glance in its direction and, like a bored museum visitor, move on to the next one down the line. Beautiful things require attention and, if only for a limited time, an attachment both deep and intense, to abandon them, like being abandoned by them, is always a source of pain.
(Alexander Nehamas Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art 2007)

Saturday, December 4, 2010

embodying the ugly

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(Lady Gaga in Bad Romance, decked out in faux Polar bear fur coat, about to torch the man who bought her at auction, with a fire spurting bar.)

The poet makes use of the ugliness of forms: what use of this is granted to the painter? Painting, as an imitative faculty, can express ugliness: painting as a fine art cannot express it. In the first case all visible objects belong to it; in the second it includes only those visible objects that arouse pleasurable feelings [...]
The same holds for the ugliness of forms. This ugliness offends our eyes, clashes with our taste for order and harmony, arousing repugnance without our taking into account the real existence of the object we perceive as ugly. We should not like to see Thersytes, either in nature or in an image; and although his image displeases us less, this happens not because the ugliness of his form ceases to be ugly in an imitation, but because we possess the faculty of abstracting from ugliness, and we delight only in the painter's art. But even this delight is constantly interrupted by the reflection on how art has been badly employed, and seldom will this thought fail to bring with it the devaluation of the artist [...]
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Laocoon (1766)

Friday, December 3, 2010

musical enjoyment



Rostropovich performing the Praleudium from the Bach Cello suite no. 5 in C minor.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Pareludium

I have had the "epiphonic" even catastrophic pleasure of hearing for the first time the fifth cello suite in C minor, [which is the relative key to E flat]. The Pareludium alone will send your ear drums into throes of harmonic ecstasy. But the whole suite is stunning and worth listening to with your evening tea or fingers of whiskey.

This suite in particular is written in Scordatura - Italian for mistuning. That means the A string is tuned a whole tone lower to G, to make playing the chords easier. This is partly what gives this piece its haunting tone. The numerous chords add to its richness.

I'm not sure how I lived before, having never heard this magnificent piece of music.
Je suis méduser. C'est éblouissant.

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(image c/o http://www.wimmercello.com/bachs5ms.html)

Monday, November 29, 2010

volonté de puissance - une distinction

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Sleepers by Toulouse-Lautrec


We can also “want” [ie. will-to-have] something (eg. a book, etc)… would like to have, will to have as want is a striving after something, and has the special characteristic of wishing. But to wish is not yet to will. Whoever only wishes, in the strict sense of the word, does not will; rather, he hopes that his wish will come true without his having to do anything about it. Is will then wishing to which we add our own initiative? No, willing is not wishing at all. It is the submission of ourselves to our own command, and the resoluteness of such self-command, which already implies our carrying out the command.
Heidegger, Martin, Nietzsche: Volume 1: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell, (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1979) pg. 40

hysteria

Unica Zürn

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Portrait of Unica Zürn by Hans Bellmar

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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Isomorphic: corresponding or similar in form and relations; having the same crystalline form.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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Olafur Eliasson
Danish/Icelandic
1967
Phenomenology
Psychogeography
Time & Space
Here & Now

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Nietzsche + Heidegger - God = Gaga

At the age of twenty-eight, as a professor in Basel, Nietzsche writes (X, 112):

"There are times of great danger in which philosophers appear - times when the wheel rolls ever faster - when philosophers and artists assume the place of the dwindling mythos. They are far ahead of their time, however, for the attention of contemporaries is only quite slowly drawn to them. A people which becomes aware of its dangers produces the genius."

(Heidegger, Martin, Nietzsche: Volume 1: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell, (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1979) pg. 3)

Having studied Nietzsche and realized God is dead, Maëva at the age of 27, dedicates herself to the study of thinkers, art and the religion of Gaga, praying to the leopard clad deity for a safe journey through the next stack of books dedicated to Nietzsche.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

paparazzi

Being photographed by the constant mob of paparazzi photographers who chase me around Montréal day in and day out.
Oh, life is so hard!

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Maeva and Brendan Fernades, nominee representing Ontario, captured at the 2010 Sobey Art Award Gala, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.

Check out Brendan's great work here.

Friday, November 12, 2010

say goodbye to my bad girl meat

because she's gonna be writing essays till the days turn golden and warm again.

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and of the wind-flower

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a magical place. Cap Corse as seen from the tower in Nonza, a town I dreamed of visiting for so long.
Nonza, Corse.

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Photo misfire at baie-du-febvre, QC.
photo courtesy of mon beau pépé <3

Sunday, November 7, 2010

tea cups and pearls

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and the bright surface of gold crocuses

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sentier through the macquis outside of Macanaggio
Cap Corse, Corse.

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Pg. 172 of La Force des Choses II by Simone de Beauvoir.
sadly unrealized project.
Drummondville, QC.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

and the colour of azure crocuses

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The Citadell in Calvi
Calvi, Corse.

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Sushi door, bar in Québec for Défy Pepi
Québec, QC

Friday, November 5, 2010

where the light struck,

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The Corse experience is not fully lived unless you take the train.
Calvi train station, Corse.

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Jacq, in the toilet, at the bar, for Défy Pepi.
Québec, QC.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

wanted: your help

If you were to write an essay about Lady Gaga and her place within the visual arts in the 21st century, which lyric (of the following choices) would you choose for your title:

a) He ate my heart, and then he ate my brain
b) I want your ugly, I want your disease
c) Silicone, saline, poison, inject me
d) show me your teeth
e) other: please state.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

*

Quanta / quantum
Diachronic
Metaphysics
Ontological
Causality
Subatomic
Panpsychism
Substratum / substrata
Contingent
Naught


* sometimes I really don’t like living with a roommate, especially an absent minded one who forgets to pay our telephone/internet/cable bill. Although, life is somehow less complicated when those extraneous distractions are removed.

Maëva and Nietzsche get to know each other a little better.

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(photo credit: wikipedia)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

caught from the raw fissure in the rock

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Anna and Maëva.
Les calanches de Piana.

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more graffiti at Québec City bar. Taken during the Défi Pepy film festival.
Québec City, QC.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

L'impropre

Dégoût d'une nourriture, d'une saleté, d'un déchet, d'une ordure. Spasmes et vomissements qui me protègent. Répulsion, haut-le-coeur qui m'écarte et me détourne de la souillure, du cloaque, de l'immonde. Ignominie de la compromissions, de l'entre-deux, de la traîtrise. Sursaut fasciné qui m'y conduit et m'en sépare.

Le dégoût alimentaire est peut-être la forme la plus élémentaire et la plus archaïque de l'abjection. Lorsque cette peau à la surface du lait, inoffensive, mince comme une feuille de papier à cigarettes, minable comme une rognure d'ongles, se présente aux yeux, ou touche les lèvres, un spasme de la glotte et plus bas encore, de l'estomac, du ventre, de tous les viscères, crispe le corps, presse les larmes et la bile, fait battre le coeur, perler le front et les mains. Avec le vertige qui brouille, le regard, la nausée me cambre, contre cette crème de lait, et me sépare de la mère, du père qui me la présentent. De cet élément, signe de leur désir, "je" n'en veux pas, "je" ne veux rien savoir, "je" ne l'assimile pas, "je" l'expulse. Mais presque cette nourriture n'est pas un "autre" pour "moi" qui ne suis que dans leur désir, je m'expulse, je me crache, je m'abjecte dans le même mouvement par lequel "je" prétends me poser. Ce détail, insignifiant peut-être mais qu'ils cherchent, chargent, apprécient, m'imposent, ce rien me retroune comme un gant, les tripes en l'air: ainsi ils voient, eux, que je suis en train de devenir un autre au prix de ma propre mort. Dans ce tranjet où "je" deviens, j'accouche de moi dans la violence du sanglot, du vomi. Protestation muette du symptôme, violence francassante d'une vonvulstaion, inscrite certes en un système symbolique, mais dans lequel, sans vouloir ni pouvoir s'intègrer pour y répondre, ça réagit, ça abréagit. Ça abjecte.

"L'approche de l'ajection" dans Pouvoirs de l'horreur: essai sur l'abjection par Julia Kristeva. pgs. 10-11.

post 202

my heart (and feet) hurts.
teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeth.
rum and coke
love my roomie
brunch
aristote
platon.
plotin.
sooon this will all be over.
one week till home.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Gaga + TK = eaten heart

Lady Gaga has already mimiced many famous amazing milestone artists.
Now Gaga teams up with Canadian performance artist Terence Koh. On several occassions. Anyone see the co-performance with Elton John? Where Gaga is thrown into an inferno machine and emerges with him at a double ended piano with arms extended raising from the middle? the piano was designed by Terence Koh.

then there is the odd performance where the two (Gaga and TK) count out and place in a tea cup 88 pearls. (called 88 pearls). but they skip numbers, recreating their own system for counting.

Now I found, via Gaga journal, GAGAKOH - a performance that they performed together in Tokyo.

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(images c/o littlemonster.blog.com)

You can read more about the performance as well as Gaga's role as HIV/Aids activist - one of many activist roles she incorporates - in the latest entry to the Gaga Journal (here!)
the title is one of my favourite of her lyrics: I want your disease.

hyacinth colour

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Les calanches de Piana.

Piana is a village in the south west of the island. Just outside of the village is the UNESCO world heritage site of Les Calanches de Piana. The calanques are massive red rocks that have been shaped and worn away by the wind and the sea. They are most famous for the shapes that they resemble like the head of the dog, the lovers and the castle, among the breathtaking views of the sea, from sheer drops off cliffs.

Piana, Corse.

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graffiti in a bar bathroom.
Québec City, QC.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Gaga Does Dada

In a wild turn of events, Gaga uses her mimetic skillz on one of the most famous Dadaist works by one of the most famous 20th century artists.

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Armitage Shanks: "I'm not Fucking Duchamp but I love pissing with you"
(image courtesy of Gaga Stigmata)

It seems like the logical next step in this ever evolving machine of spectacle and flux.
There has already been homage to the body and the performance art that emerged from the 60s notably Carolee Schneemann. Then the mimesis of Madonna, MJ and other landmark big shoe pop stars that Gaga somehow can over shadow despite the shortness of her career. the move from fame to fame monster was an interesting step - we are in love with a monster who is nothing but grotesque.
More mimesis - too literal maybe of Jana Sterbak and the meat dress Vanitas, but also recalling the ideas of decay and mortality that is present in the amazing work of Kiki Smith.
more outfits than we could ever imagine, that are so intense in and of themselves. one must wonder where she stores them, and how she can stand wearing them. forget comfort folks. life is a performance.
Jo Caledrone - alter ego of Ms. Gaga.
And finally Dada. It is very logical, I wish I could have foreseen it but I wasn't at all prepared for this, despite her work already resonating the Dadaist vision quite a bit.
*sigh* when will I learn.

but reflex of the earth

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les calanches de Piana.

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Peanut butter cookies made with olive oil, maple syrup and topped with a smartie, in the perfect green village des valeurs cast iron pan. c/o 101 cookbooks.
Drummondville, QC.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

what had my face to offer

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Cala d'Orzu.

The Rive Sud draws to a dramatic climax at Capo di Muro, on whose sheltered northern flank a particularly picturesque watchtower rises from a dense cover of maquis. Follow the signboards off the main road and you’ll drop down a rutted piste to a magnificent beach on the south side of the promontory called Cala d’Orzu. One of the two bar-restaurants behind it, Chez Francis, made international headlines when it was destroyed in an arson attack – not by separatist or Mafia guerrillas, as is normally the case in Corsica, but by undercover French police acting, or so it turned out, under direct orders from the state’s most senior offcial on the island.

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Once Rashleigh Peugeot arrived, my life changed and started involving a lot more greenery and time spent in this lovely river side park. Also a lot of four leaf clover finding started again. Early summer is the loveliest kind of light.
Drummondville, QC.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

the fire of your own presence?

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One day, this house may no longer exist.
Bonifactio, Corse

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the beginning of summer is so joyful, everyone's hearts are lifted.
park on rue Jogue, Drummondville, QC.

Friday, October 8, 2010

the light of your own face,

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Bonifacio, Bonifaziu, the village hanging precariously over the sea.

Bonifacio enjoys a superbly isolated situation at Corsica’s southernmost point, a narrow peninsula of dazzling white limestone creating a town site unlike any other on the island. The haute ville, a maze of narrow streets flanked by tall Genoese tenements, rises seamlessly out of sheer cliffs that have been hollowed and striated by the wind and waves, while on the landward side the deep cleft between the peninsula and the mainland forms a perfect natural harbour. A haven for boats for centuries, the anchorage is nowadays dominated by a swish marina that attracts yachts from all around the Mediterranean.

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Christmas present. Paper whites. Winter time flowers. in my corsica shaped indoor garden.
Drummondville, QC.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

MTL part dix-sept

Dear UQÀM,

Lots of people know you as Université du Québec À Montréal. I'm renaming you today Université de Quelque sort de (à becomes de here) Maudite merde.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

la vie rhizomatique

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Today, we are going to embrace the "Rhizome" care of Deleuze and Guattari a couple of French/Italian God's I've loved from a far in my bedroom cozy corner for some time now.

what was it you saw in my face?

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Bonifacio II

It could be that Bonifacio’s first documented appearance is as the town of the cannibalistic Laestrygonians in the Odyssey; Homer’s description of an “excellent harbour, closed in on all sides by an unbroken ring of precipitous cliffs, with two bold headlands facing each other at the mouth so as to leave only a narrow channel in between” fits the port well. The unploughed land that Odysseus comes across inland of the harbour could be a reference to the plain beyond the Bonifacio promontory, and it’s also possible that he Neolithic tribes that once lived in this area where the barbaric attackers of Odysseus’s crew.

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fiber optics art amongst the lipstick trees.
nuit blanche 2010, Montréal, QC

Sunday, October 3, 2010

women's lib(ia)

"La femme, elle se touche d'elle-même et en elle-même sans la nécessité d'une médiation, et avant tou départage possible entre activité et passivité. La femme 'se touche' tout le temps, sans que l'on puisse d'ailleurs le lui interdire, car son sexe est fait de deux lèvres qui s'embrassent continûment. Ainsi, en elle, elle est déjà deux - mais non divisibles en un(e)s - qui s'affectent."

- Luce Irigary de "Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un" p. 24.

and your glance?

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Bonifacio. A magical town. Right at the most southern tip of the island, the cliffs have been shaped by the winds of the Mediterranean Sea. This town was brutally massacreed by pirates way before Napoleon's time and it is also rumored that this the port city that Odyssey comes into during his journey.
A beautiful, eerie place. The rock you see in this photo, mammoth and majestic, is called 'le grain de sable' - humorous.

Bonifacio, Corse.

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Ninja Knittas the night we installed Red Trees
Drummondville, QC.
I miss that apartment, and those Angie times so much.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

with the light from yours

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The village of Bastica. Nestled in the mountains not far from the "urban centre" of Ajaccio, this sleepy village is the birth place of Sampiero Corso, one of the fathers of the nation. He is memorialized in the town square as a Gold Statue triumphantly about to draw his sword.
Bastica, Corse.

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...
there is no number 52.
my numeration skills are drastically declining.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

oh, grammar!

iiiiiiiiiiiii cccccccaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn'tttttttttttt slleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

I just don't care if it's the fashion or not, I don't like black tights with light coloured skirts. It puts me off my food. and tights. and skirts. and none of that is cool.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

What was it that crossed my face

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In the mountains, ascending to Val d'Ese, we came across this lunar landscape.
Corse.

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new hair. new sewing machine.
Grimsby, ON.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

James Turrell

James Turrell is a conceptual artist. His medium of choice is light. I had the great opportunity to see a collection of his works on permanent display at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA.

Emergency Exit

The Polish Pavillion at the 12th annual International Architecture Exhibition in Venice presents Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska.

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(image credit: Jan Smaga and http://www.labiennale.art.pl/)

Longing for...

Ever wondering if there was a connection between architecture and choreogrpahy? Ever wonder if you could choreograph a space depending on the architecutral design of that space? Well... here is your answer:

above my face

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le vieux port.
Bastia, Corse.

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The whales of the world. One of my many maps.
Drummondville, QC.

comfort food

Everyone has there comfort food.
I have many. We are going to go with comfort cookies today.

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Monday, September 27, 2010

He ate my heart, and then he ate my brain.

- "libertá per Ivan Collona" graffiti in the Pavillion V at UQAM. The Pavillion V is the one sandwiched between the erotica video movie theatre and the other miscellanea sex shops.

- The tuna sandwich at lunch just isn't cutting it

- taking a trip to the toilet only to find a needle deposit box. in a public washroom in the Pavillion J. The Pavillion J is not sandwiched between any sex shops, but I guess it's where all the crack whores hang out, and is why they chose it as the location for said needle deposit box. It comes with a handy sign inside the washroom stalls saying "les aiguelles, les applicatuers, ne les laissent pas trainer".

- coming out of lecture feeling the life sucked out of me as if by a vampire, only to see it's raining.

- strap on my rain pants and take off on my bike to David's house. Thank God for David and his amazing cooking skills and stocked kitchen of cooking gadgets. Some engineers get into photography for the gadgets, but David got into cooking!

- ride home in the rain but this time up two hills, which I conquered in full rain outfit soaking wet glory. Be hold the muscular maëva.

- I need a stiff drink. Now.

caught with the flame of the upper earth

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Bastia, nowadays capital of the department of Haute-Corse, was the capital of the entire island under Genoa’s colonial administration, and it was the Genoese who laid the foundation of northern Corsica’s prosperity by encouraging the planting of vines, olives, chestnut trees and other more experimental crops – there’s even a village called Sparagaghiju (Asparagus) in the hills above St. Florent.