Marching In
War, Work, Wonder,Wistfulness
ARS MORIENDI : TT Intensive 3/22
Reading Diary
Kevin Clark’s GHOST BIKE, Chicago at Western and Logan Blvd
Death Themed Amusements, Joanna Ebenstein
I was surprised to learn that Brooklyn's Coney Island amusement park was focused on themes of death and destruction. A place where one can be thrilled by the experience of death or of unspeakable terror in a controlled,fantastic, colorful and amusing environment was, and is, something sought out by a civilized society deprived of an understanding of death. Perhaps it is because industrialized culture has more often chosen not to look directly at death; many bury or dispose of the dead without looking at a corpse. Even speaking about the losing one's life becomes an awkward subject to address with one another. We tend to skirt around the issue; we put our beloved in a box in a hole in the ground and move on, mourning from our interiors.
Is it our protective instincts that behoove us to plan and prepare for a trauma to be able to cope with it more functionally? Prior to the advancement of the medical technologies that exist today (that would prevent us from being buried alive), there were palpable fears and probable causes for having Taphophobia, yet… the idea of it… the scare of it… the life and death of it, could make one almost feel more alive to have lived through it vicariously.
“Poe’s narrator asserts that ‘ ‘to be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes [of agony] which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.’ “
“....death and darkness at a safe remove have long thrilled humans. The reason such attractions died out was not that humankind outgrew this vicarious pleasure; rather, it was a shift of mediums: the actored, ephemeral spectacle endlessly repeated was supplanted by cinema. Film could create immersive amusements much more cheaply, for it need only be created only once and, upon completion, could be easily distributed around the world.”
Such an irony of the demise of Dreamland! The “experience (moments of terror of) its destruction was exactly what had been emulated at Coney Island. The horrific destruction of an amusement that purported to terrorize yet was safe enough for one to live through the experience was never recreated as an amusement to re-experience a horrible fiery demise.
Ono, Yoko and John Lennon. "[Excerpt]." Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions + Drawings,
This an excercise of living. Observing the world in a series of repetitive sensory experiences by interacting meditatively. How can one experience life through the mundane, through the imagination… these many ways of seeing and hearing and sounding and tasting that we are numbed by and take for granted.
Ars Moriendi: Coping with death in the Late Middle Ages
Process Blog:
What impact will remain…...these fragments of you and I and we …...after this life, after this physical body fails to employ the actions of this mind. The artworks - they may stay, all the words, all the tears of the making of and learning and experimenting…ART breathes differently. Art can die in destruction but odds are it will outlive me. My voice just might be discovered and heard in the future, a record that I existed in the past. My mouth-lungs will be silenced by disease or age or war or trauma - the writings and relics may remain as cautionary tales of living, as humorous anecdotes, as windows into one helluva human experience. Death moves closer every minute, lurking sly and mysterious, winking from a distance for now ( but I see you). Live full and live well and rage and roar for it is fleeting -welcome this moment that air fills your lungs and your arms can hold the ones you love close to your beating, dying heart.
Lament of the Mothers, 2022, ceramic, mortar, on board
Kintsugi Bibliography 3/22
Kintsugi: Golden Mending, The Matheson Trust https://www.themathesontrust.org/papers/fareasternreligions/Kintsugi-Golden%20Mending.pdf
The Geo-Cultural Conditions of Kinsugi, Guy Keulemans, University of Australia https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305542753_The_Geo-cultural_Conditions_of_Kintsugi
Western and Eastern Building Conservation Philosophies: Perspectives on Permanence and Impermanence, Alan Forster UK https://www.napier.ac.uk/~/media/worktribe/output-1231791/western-and-eastern-building-conservation-philosophies-perspectives-on-permanence-and.pdf
Kintsugi: A new framework for Post-Industrial Transformation, Katelin Posthuma https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/19100/Posthuma_umd_0117N_17756.pdf?sequence=1
Exploring Japanese Art and Aesthetic as Inspiration for Emotionally Durable Design, Pui Ying Kwan http://www.designedasia.com/2012/Full_Papers/Exploring%20Japanese%20Art%20and%20Aesthetic.pdf
Japanese Aesthetics, Graham Parkes, Stanford University https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/
A Different Kind of Beauty; Wabi and Kintsugi, Alexandre Avdulov, St Mary’s University, Canada http://25qt511nswfi49iayd31ch80-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/papers/kamc2020/KAMC2020_59109.pdf
The Reader Wiki https://thereaderwiki.com/en/Kintsugi
Tears of Gold, Sownakune Japsa (Exhibition) https://eriac.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/tekst-kuratorski-ENG.pdf
The Centuries-Old Japanese Tradition of Mending Broken Ceramics with Gold, Casey Lesser https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-centuries-old-japanese-tradition-mending-broken-ceramics-gold
The Problematic Metaphor Of Kintsugi In Chemical Hearts, On Amazon Prime https://www.filmcompanion.in/readers-articles/chemical-hearts-movie-review-amazon-prime-the-problematic-metaphor-of-kintsugi-lili-reinhart-austin-abrams/
A New book Examines the Enduring Relevance of Kintsugi as Metaphor, Tiffany Lambert https://www.slowdown.tv/touch/a-new-book-examines-the-enduring-relevance-of-kintsugi-as-metaphor
Bonnie Kemske https://www.bonniekemske.com
Kitsugi Atelier in Kyoto https://www.airbnb.ca/experiences/382347
Kintsugi Teacher Kyoto https://shitsugeisya.jimdo.com