Nietzschean Eternal Return

eternelle retour à Gaga

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)

embrassez mon coeur.

other. in-between. border.

(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)

reflexion

— 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)

embodying the ugly

(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)

musical enjoyment

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

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.


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

volonté de puissance - une distinction

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



Portrait of Unica Zürn by Hans Bellmar

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

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

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.

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!



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.

say goodbye to my bad girl meat

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

and of the wind-flower

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

40

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

tea cups and pearls

and the bright surface of gold crocuses

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

41

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