#how to write in spirit in terms of organised structure

[slumgirlqueen]

How to be a novelist: How to write in spirit in terms of organised structure

Yesterday I actually wanted to write about this, then I thought to myself, there was something you needed to learn first. So today, I will tackle this.

So what is organised structure? Organised structure is simply the way you organised the sentence. Which part goes where and so on. When you are writing in spirit, it is difficult to mimic exactly how writers write. So in these lessons, we will do just that. I will teach you step by step how to write in spirit, 'til you can do it fleuntly.

For this lesson I will be taking from page 5 in the first chapter of A Prayer for Owen Meany. The excerpt goes like this:

"If he had his baseball cards with him, they, too, would fall out of his pockets."

Notice that there are four ideas here with each broken apart by commas. The first part of the sentence introduces the subject and circumstance of it, Owen's possession of the baseball cards, which is the first idea. After the first comma, the second idea is "they", the baseball card again. This usage of "they" alone allows the next part of the sentence to work 'cause it isolates the baseball cards alone by themselves. The third idea is "too" and comes after another comma. This usage as a separate idea makes the subject of the baseball cards inclusive to what is explained next. The fourth idea here comes after another comma, "would fall out of his pockets"; the fourth idea being what happens to the baseball cards.

Whatever your original text you are basing your writings on, remember to keep in mind how the sentences are broken down in punctuations.

For this lesson, let us use the passage from A Prayer for Owen Meany as homework. Write an original sentence with four ideas, each separated by commas; with the second idea being the subject that is now a pronoun, and the third being adverb like "too", and the fourth being what happens to the subject.

This is a profoundly powerful way of learning to write in spirit, so I suggest you write a dozen of these 'til you get the hang of it and are able to write in spirit in terms of organised structure.

Good luck and happy writing!

#how to be a novelist #how to write in spirit in terms of organised structure

[thesquishywizard]

How to make a Grimoire!

This took me a week to compile so if you enjoy it and want to support me, this a link to my ko-fi!

Hey there, I’m Ismo the Squishy Wizard, and today I want to talk about how you could go about making a grimoire for yourself. Grimoires are very personal despite being for information and reference, so it is understandable that some of my advice just won’t fit your way of doing things. The following advice is based on my experiences and the experiences of other magical practitioners and witches I have spoken to or watched on youtube, so hopefully you can avoid some problems we have ran into.

What is the difference between a grimoire and a book of shadows (BoS)?

A grimoire is often only a magical reference book while a book of shadows is not only a magical reference book, but also a diary, record of magical activities and ultimately, whatever you make of it. The reason why you might want one more than the other is purely down to personal taste.

A grimoire will detail what things mean, their origins, uses and personal associations. It is in an order that will help the witch easily find what they’re looking for, whether that is in alphabetical order, simplicity to complexity, importance to you or some other personal order. Grimoires tend to be quite formal, being written in highly decorated documents on a computer, high quality notebooks, scrapbooks or sketchbooks.

A book of shadows may do all that too but also include records of daily practice, experiences with deities or spirits, personal reflection and introspection, thoughts and questions about the craft, results of spells and maybe dreams too. It generally is in order of learning and experiencing so can be slightly harder to navigate for reference for some people. Books of shadows tend to be more casual and some people write them in old school books and notebooks. Some people separate things further and put dreams and personal reflection and introspection in a book of mirrors, so that might be a good thing to think about.

Other people don’t define grimoires and BoS in this way and see it as two terms for the same concept and use “BoS” and “grimoire” interchangeably, so this may still be useful advice for those making a BoS. Neither a BoS or a grimoire is better universally, it is about what is best for you and the way you practice.

I personally have a grimoire and a magical diary as two seperate books!

Why might you want a grimoire?

Grimoires are useful for compiling knowledge all in one place, in a language you understand and work well with. With a grimoire, you might not feel the need to get several books out, just your grimoire because you will have used your knowledge and experience and the authors of those other books experiences when writing information in your grimoire. It also allows you to remove any jargon you don’t understand or add useful diagrams and pictures if you are a visual learner. A grimoire still shouldn’t be your only book, always continue learning and researching with others’ insights, grimoires are just more compact and quick for when you quickly need to find something out or need a bit of help. However, you don’t need a grimoire, if you think a book of shadows, a magical diary or just using pre-existing books is more useful to you, don’t make a grimoire. Grimoires can be an awful lot of work, only make one if you feel like you need it and are going to use it.

Don’t instantly begin making a grimoire, wait at least three months

A grimoire holds all the information that is important to your craft and though the beautiful, awe inspiring pictures of grimoires get a new witch raring to go, it is probably not best to make a grimoire yet. Making a book of shadows or a simple diary would probably be more useful and less overwhelming to begin with and you can still record new knowledge you come across, it is still important to learn and research as this is what will get you ready to make a grimoire.

Trying to make an organised, informative grimoire when you are still new to the craft can be very hard and may cause you to include misinformation or elements of witchcraft that are simply not relevant to your life soon after looking into them, as a witch’s practice changes a lot drastically in the first year or two, and their path will still change, but often just slighter, through their whole life.

This might mean that whole sections of your grimoire are never used, putting your hard work to waste. Some witches don’t start making their grimoire until they are years into their path, as they are now more sure of their beliefs, the way they practice and their thoughts on things so they can guarantee everything is of use to them, and should be for a long time.

I started my first grimoire five months into my path but I honestly should have done it later, as my path underwent some drastic changes only six months later (so eleven months into my path), but I’ve had a very stable path for about a year now so I’m currently making a new grimoire. Now I’m learning additional things, so I feel more comfortable starting my grimoire again. I’ve not learnt things that reshape my whole way of thinking and practice for quite a bit, though this can still happen at any point in your journey and it should be welcomed with open arms, but just a warning, that sort of thing is more likely to happen early on in your path.

Research and meditate on your findings!

To work out what path you want to take and how that may inform what goes into your grimoire, you need to research. You’ve probably heard before that the first step to anything in witchcraft is research which is very true and the sooner you start researching the quicker you’ll be able to understand and confidently start your grimoire. Bookmark websites, stick post-it notes and bookmarks in your books, or even begin collating your information into a computer document or writing it down in your diary or BoS. 

Experience being a witch before beginning to write your grimoire, try out those spells, try out those ideas, you may find that they simply don’t work for you or mesh right with your personal experiences or you may find that you’re a lot more into that area than you first thought you would be and you need to do deeper research and learn even more! Explore the world around you and record it in your diary, BoS, phone or elsewhere. Get to know the plants common in your area and therefore useful in your practice, the constellations in the sky, the food you can make, anything, just get to know what you like. Also make sure you fully understand a subject before deciding to put it in your grimoire, I’ve known witches who have written about things such as chakras, only to later find the western model of chakras is very warped from their Hindu and Tantric Buddhism origins and I myself have written about plants that are native to the Americas, despite me being British and having no way to access them because I didn’t properly research. 

When researching information, always think about whether it is relevant to you and whether you enjoy it. It can be tempting to research anything and everything but you might get burnt out and find the craft overwhelming that way and also some things are from closed practices. You should always check if something is from a closed practice, even if it seems to be commonly used.

Always use multiple resources even when it comes down to something as simple as latin names. The book I was using for British plants and wildflowers was written in the 1910s, which meant some latin names had changed so I crossed referenced every one with both British wildflower websites and wikipedia.

Drafting and planning your grimoire

Once you’ve collected some reliable resources and you feel comfortable in your understanding of the subjects that you’re interested in, you could start planning out your grimoire.

I recommend planning your grimoire so you don’t get overwhelmed by all of the things you want to put into it and how you want to present it.

First, think about what medium you want to construct your grimoire in, do you want it to be a digital grimoire? Or maybe in an actual book? Both? Next, think about the order you want everything in, though it isn’t yet made, plan it out something like a contents page. Make sure the order of things makes sense to your brain. Also, maybe have a little think about the future, maybe you could futureproof your book if you know there are areas that you want to look into one day or look into further and take into account the extra room you might need.

If you choose to make a physical grimoire, consider making a first draft before the finished project. You can do this in an old notebook or digitally. Mistakes are made and you don’t want to fumble your words so you could write it in full before writing it in your book, but many just plan a series of points they wish to cover. I planned mine in full in google docs, just without pictures. This meant I had all my knowledge and research already compiled and worded in a way I was happy with, I can often mess up my wording on the fly.

If you choose to make a digital grimoire you don’t have to worry as much about drafting, but it’s still important to make a structured plan for how you will organize things within your grimoire. Moving sections about can be a bit tricky! It’s also a good idea to choose which program you want to make your grimoire in, make sure it’s one you know how to use well so you don’t get frustrated, making a grimoire is meant to be fun. Some people enjoy using an art program to digitally draw and write their information, then they print them out! Some people instead use something like a google doc or document program, adding information in the form of text, pictures or charts but keeping it digital.

Tips for actually making your grimoire!

If you’ve planned a physical grimoire, it might be a good idea to get a larger book than you expect to actually need! You will keep using this book in the future, and continue to add information to it. You don’t want to run out of space when you have something really cool to talk about! As previously said, you could also futureproof it by leaving spaces or whole pages blank for extra information or new subjects.

A digital grimoire doesn’t mean a dull grimoire! Download some free fonts, lots of free witchy fonts exist and can really inject more of you into your document. There’s also lots of free photo websites or you could take your own photos and put them in your document. It doesn’t have to be all text in times new roman. I really like ‘Adalind’! https://www.fontspace.com/category/witch 

Some people find it is a good idea to source their information, especially when they are using their experiences and the experiences of several other people. This means that things can be checked later, years into the future if you are confused as to why something might be so.

You don’t have to know how to draw well to make a physical grimoire! You can print out pictures, you can take pictures out of magazines or books, or you can use something like postcards, tea cards, trading cards, lots of things! Don’t just restrict yourself to photos and drawings you’ve done.

Pressing flowers and leaves can be a wonderful idea for a physical grimoire, especially if you don’t have access to a printer or you feel like your art skills aren’t there. It can also give your grimoire that field journal feel! However, pressing flowers and leaves can mean some colour loss. To retain the most colour, keep the plants pressed for two or three weeks in a warm room. Most small flowers or leaves in a warm room will be pressed after just under a week. Never press a plant for more than a year, you don’t need to wait that long and also you run the risk of making your sample brittle. You could also laminate leaves (but not flowers, the heat seems to mess them up) and this seems to retain the colour better.

When making a physical grimoire, if using a book, make sure the book has a thick, sturdy cover, the book might get damaged with a soft cover, so a hard card, leather or even cork cover is a good idea to look out for when selecting your book. When selecting a book, never go for a type of binding known as ‘perfect binding’, as it uses glue to bind the pages to the cover. With the nature of grimoires, they tend to puff out quite a bit with all the flaps, pictures and pressed samples, which can break the inflexible glue binding. A good binding is wire or spiral bound, this means you can completely fold the pages over, reducing the total spread of the book on a work surface at any given time. Another good type of book is screwpost binding, here screws that can be easily screwed in and out hold the book together or alternatively bits of string to bind the book instead of the screws (this is my book’s binding). You can take the bits out and punch holes in your paper to increase the total amount of canvas you have to work with, it’s a lot like a ring binder, except it’s a book! Lastly, another common type of grimoire binding is section sewn, this is usually found in handmade leather grimoires. It’s virtually impossible to add paper to these, but they’re very sturdy and look quite magical. You can also bind your own books this way!

If you choose to make a ring binder grimoire, try to get a sturdy, high quality one. Many ring binders rings can’t actually match up, which can shred your paper as they pass over these sharp points. Also keep in mind a sturdy cover, some ring binders have a thin flexible plastic sheet, but cardboard or even wooden covers are out there and are a bit better at protecting your work.

If you plan to use multi-media methods of creating your grimoire, or heavy types of ink, I suggest you go for a heavyweight type of paper, something like a high quality notebook or sketchbook will be good. Handbound artisan books tend to come with heavyweight thick paper, so you don’t have to worry about those too much. Loose leaves of heavy paper can be bought from art shops if you are making a ring binder grimoire or need to add pages to a screwpost binding style book and are also using heavy inks, paints or making it scrapbook style.

Through all this, remember that the grimoire is primarily meant for you, you aren’t making it for other people, so don’t beat yourself up if it isn’t the most aesthetic and gorgeously professional thing ever. There’s a lot of pretty grimoires online for inspiration, but try not to just completely copy their work, or constantly compare your own creation to other peoples. They likely have been making grimoires for a very long time. As long as it gets the job done and makes you happy, that’s all that matters. It should be a little piece of yourself that looks and feels like you. 

Things to possibly include in your grimoire

Witches never have to do all of these, it is your path so pick and choose what inspires you!

Most grimoires have a title page including the date it was started and your magical name if you have one.

Some people include an invisibility sigil to prevent prying eyes, a curse that punishes them for looking or a warning that this book isn’t for them. Others bless their book!

Many people have a contents page so they can remember where to find the information they need.

A lot of witches include a personal introduction, explaining what brought them to the craft, a bit about who they are, favourite things like herbs, crystals and colours, any familiars they work with or any magical abilities they have. Some people almost make a little correspondence page about themselves, including key herbs, a natal chart, their birth tarot card and personal sigil.

Not all magical practitioners work with deities in their craft or are religious at all, but if you are, having a section about your deity or whole pantheon is a good idea. Write about what your deity acts like, what they are the deity of/over, things they enjoy as offerings or how you came to first begin working with them.

If you follow a wheel of the year or have celebrations, a page on these is a good idea. What does the celebration represent? What are some ideas for activities to do then? What does it mean to you?

Some people have a series of morals or tenants they follow and believe in. Maybe write down yours for your path.

The main chunk of the grimoire should be about what you work with. This could be plants, food, crystals, animals, colours, astrology, planetary magic, fair folk, magical creatures and much more! For each entry, explain the concept’s or item’s correspondences and uses, whether that be the common use or your personal uses and associations, what the item is like, where to find it, folklore about it, non-magical and mundane uses and maybe how to make it if it is something like food.

Another big chunk is often common spells, potions, practices or rituals you do and how to do them. Spells such as banishing, protecting, removing curses are all popular spells to record in a grimoire and meditation, grounding and centering methods are some non-spell things that are still important for many witches to know.

You might also want to talk about different types of spells in general, how to create one and what the differences are between them.

Some people talk about the tools they use, especially in practices like traditional Wicca, where there are important tools like chalices and athames. More universal tools like taglocks are another good thing to cover.

It's a good idea to talk about the divination methods there are or just the ones you personally use if you use any. Also cover any layouts, spreads or boards you might use. Witches don’t have to do divination, so if you don’t, you don’t have to include it! 

Some people include a section on magical theory, how they believe magic works. You could also do a section on how divination works for you. Some people think it helps introspection and decisions while others think it helps peer into possible futures.

You might want to include different alphabets relevant to your practice. If your practice is norse based, different futharks might be useful, whereas for hellenic practices, ancient greek alphabets will probably be of more use. The theban or witches’ alphabet is a common alphabet to be found in modern grimoires. Alphabets can help you code things from prying eyes or make sigils.

If you do ancestor or spirit work, you could talk about your ancestors or the spirits you work with. What they were/are like, wisdom they have passed on to you and other information you think is important.

Talk about how to work with spirits if you work with them. How to call them, how to respect them and how to banish them are important things to know.

If your path is a pre-existing one, talk about the history and origin of your type of witchcraft. If religion is heavily important to your path, talk about the history and how it has changed over time too. If your path is unique to you, talk about how you discovered and formed it!

Most witches include folktales, superstition or local wisdom and customs from their area. This could be ghost tales, how to keep crops safe, or even local magical goings on, anything that connects you to the land of your area.

Some people have people in their family who did things that could be considered magical. Many people used to do divination, herbalism (herbalism isn’t inherently witchcraft, it is using plants for healing and health and may or may not have a magical element to it) or use country wisdom and did not consider themselves witches or magical practitioners. Maybe talk about your relative or if you are an open witch and they are still around, ask their opinions and thoughts on matters and include a section on them.

If you are a hereditary witch, you could talk about what you’ve learnt from your family too! Though I feel you probably don’t need my advice on making a grimoire if you are one XD

Some people talk about places that feel magical to them. Explain exactly how the area makes you feel, maybe the reason why or what you have found in that place.

Always remember, your grimoire will never truly be finished, you’ll get it to catch up with your current knowledge at points and may not add new stuff for a bit, but part of being a witch is always learning, so there’ll be more to add soon! It is also important to keep in mind, there is no shame in remaking your grimoire or having to get another volume, it is the collection of your knowledge and it's actually quite common for experienced witches to have multiple volumes of their grimoire or old ones they don’t really refer to anymore, I know grimoires are often talked about in a singular way but it really is common to have multiple.

Most of all, have fun with it. Make your grimoire! I wish you a pleasant journey on your long and winding path <3

Resources!

How to press flowers: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-to-press-flowers.html 

Types of binding: https://www.studentbookbinding.co.uk/blog/types-of-binding 

Magical alphabets and historical alphabets: https://www.omniglot.com/ 

British plant, fungi and animal species: https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer 

British plant and fungi species: https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species 

British plant, fungi and animal species: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

(I’m British so these are the resources I know are good for the UK)

#grimoire #grimoire ideas #grimoire prompts #witchblr #witchcraft #magic #wakingwitchblr #witch community #witch #witchythings #baby witch #new witch #wizard work #references #this is long and rambly and its the first proper informational post I've made so I hope its good and no one yells at me :/ #nervous!!!

[applemitten23]

Where You Can Find Amazing Selling Machine 12

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#amazingsellingmachine

[astroismypassion]

Chart reading: part 2

CAREER, PROFESSIONAL LIFE, PUBLIC IMAGE You have Scorpio MC. You might achieve some level of fame, recognition for your achievements and hard work in your career sector. You might be a very private person too. You like to keep your true desires and values private. You like your personal life to stay private too. You are an excellent researcher and your research in depth every topic (or person) you’re interested in. You might keep “a tab” for each of the people in your mind. Most of your 10th house is in Scorpio and Sagittarius. You also have Pluto and Jupiter there. You will receive a lot of luck and good charm in your 10th house sector. That is connected with parents, duties, responsibilities, career, professional life, how you are perceived, your social status, public image, social media presence and accomplishments. Your North Node is in Scorpio in the 9th house. You might be interested in research, teaching. You could work in an education or research center, as a lecturer. Or hosting your own workshops. You could be a mentor to younger people. You might be dealing with something taboo, on the outskirts of society, occult of mysticism. You could deal with other people’s resources, finance and possession. You have Mercury square Pluto and Mercury square Jupiter. This means you are capable of long hours of deep concentration. When you put your mind to something, you research it thoroughly. You might be interested in astrology too. And you will develop your own set of beliefs, values, views and opinions on life. You might even work in an institution, such as prison, museum, gallery, hospital. ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS You have Neptune in the 12th house. This means your secret, hidden talents lay in your creativity. You can sing really well or play an instrument or act, dance. And you have Capricorn over your 12th house. This means you know how to organise and structure those talents. You have a long term vision, a tunnel vision that could help you realize this potential and actually materialize it. You have Gemini Part of Fortune in the 5th house. You have Gemini Lilith in the 5th house. Those two placements are like a double edged sword. You receive the most luck, when you communicate, when you creatively express yourself through music, art, painting,drawing, acting, theatre, film, drama, writing. Yet you can show the “bad” traits of Gemini in this exact area of 5th house as well. You can be scatter minded, have trouble focusing, like to multitask and not finish a task before moving on to the next one. You have Sagittarius Juno in the 11th house in rx. This represents your “ideal soulmate”, it can be a lover or a friend. But it is someone who is free spirited, adventurous, childlike, friendly, kind and has universal love. Though, being in retrograde, it might take a while to really meet your perfect soulmate. This is also an ideal marriage partner, being in retrograde might indicate that you won’t marry. But take this with a grain of salt. Because it’s predictive astrology. You have Virgo Ceres in the 8th house. This represents how you wish to be nurtured and how you nurture others. You like to do small acts of service for others and show your love, affection and attention through actions for them. You like to merge with people, really understand them and form a deep trusted bond. You might be very loyal, once someone got your trust it’s hard to break it. You’re a ride or die person. A very all in or all out person.

#astrology #astro #reading chart #natal chart #chart reading #chart interpretation #astroblr #astroismypassion

[thepanicoffice]

A Fragile Peace: Armistice after the Great Culture War

[...]

It’s no secret that I do not have my finger on the pulse of our age. I can, given time, remember to hold a mirror up to its mouth to see if it’s still breathing, but that’s about it. This is largely due my being a seething cauldron of self-regard and venality, but it may be for other equally valid reasons too. I don’t really care.

But that means this esteemed chronicle is falling woefully behind. The last time we broke a story, it was about my torrid affair with the then-Minister of Defence, which I only revealed because, due to an unrelated matter, I needed a public alibi. Sadly, I cannot always rely on my own sexual allure to the political classes to push us to the forefront of news.

The only way to get ahead in the publishing game is to start commissioning stories on things you assume are inevitably going to happen. That’s why I have asked our war correspondent to report back from the frontlines of the impending societal rupture that will define our post-pandemic world. I present to you, from several years hence, the Armistice of the Great Culture War.

[...]

Words by Lydia Happenstance, Culture War Correspondent

Last Friday, on the third day of the third month, 2025, after nearly one and half years of confused and needless violence, the guns, sirens, and opinion pieces fell silent to mark the beginning of Armistice and an end to the Great Culture War.

It began as a battle of words between the UK Conservative Party and an enemy that they had themselves largely created; a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from scraps of Daily Telegraph premium content, animated by fears of civil unrest and falling house prices.

Their repeated assertions that you can’t say anything anymore, echoed and expanded upon by their outriders in the national press, culminated in the creation of the British Bastion of Culture [1], a paramilitary group whose mission statement was as emphatic as it was baffling: ‘To save Winston Churchill from the Marxists’.

Seeing this as a provocation, a protagonist in the Culture War gradually coalesced. After dozens of public meetings and committees of varying degrees of formality, the People’s Vanguard was established on a Zoom conference call in October 2021. Composed largely of sullen academics, irascible Twitter activists and musicians who have been unable to find meaningful employment since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vanguard – known more commonly as ‘The Wokeists’ – began to prosecute a bloody and merciless campaign of tolerance on an unsuspecting populace.

They became known for their guerrilla tactics, affixing plaques of detailed historical context about the role of slavery and structural racism onto statues, buildings, and Cabinet Ministers in a series of daring night-time raids. It was said of them that ‘the armies of the Woke never sleep’.

Retaliation from the BBC was swift and unforgiving, as they took control of local television stations and forced broadcasters to play the German episode of Fawlty Towers, which they mistakenly thought was deemed offensive by ‘the Lefties’.

By the end, and possibly from the very beginning, it was clear that many of the combatants no longer understood what they were fighting for, only what they were fighting against. The War became an end in itself, rather than a means to any kind of glorious future. Ultimately, it was attrition and the exponential increase in casualties that made a ceasefire inevitable.

The Armistice was signed in Droitwich, for reasons unknown. It was attended by the democratic committee of the Vanguard, led by their Tribune, the distressingly middle-class Marxist poet, Rupert Trebuchet MA, and by BBC leader and regular Spiked columnist, Sebastian Spitegills. No eye contact was made or pleasantries exchanged as the parties, mediated by the comedian Michael Macintyre – chosen for being so banal and anodyne as to be a wholly neutral party in the Culture War – hammered out the terms of peace.

The Treaty of Droitwich runs to some 270 pages with many complex agreements made. No off-colour jokes are to be told below the 28th parallel, meaning that you will now have to travel North of Ipswich if you want to watch a Carry On film or reference the name of the dog in Dambusters. Equally, those who wish to use the term ‘problematic’ or write a Guardian long read about culturally appropriative Halloween costumes will be obliged to travel to the South of this line that formally marks the schism in our divided nation.

Both parties have agreed to stop using the word ‘triggered’, whether ironically or unironically.

Perhaps most controversially, but in the spirit of compromise, both parties have agreed that certain issues, such as trans rights and the utilitarian calculus of whether or not Churchill was a net positive to the world, will be uniformly responded to with the dictum: “It’s actually very complicated actually.”

The Treaty also allowed for the exchange of prisoners of war, many of whom have been away from their uncomprehending and slightly embarrassed families for many months. Sadly, deaths in the POW camps of both sides have been so high that very few will be returning home. The Bastionites, considering hanging to be a tradition that uniquely represents ‘the very best of British’, have been enthusiastically performing summary executions since hostilities first began. The Wokeists took a less violent but more tedious approach, instead forcing captured fighters to undergo Tesco’s corporate Awareness and Sensitivity Training. Many of the BBC soldiers, however, preferred to take their own lives rather than learn what a microaggression is or how to avoid speaking disparagingly to BAME colleagues. Deaths number in the thousands.

The UK Labour Party hailed this historic accord. Speaking in the House of Commons, party leader Sir Keir Starmer was forceful in his praise for the Treaty, saying: “This is an event that has occurred and we recognise that.”

Prime Minister Michael Gove, when asked for comment, responded obliquely: “My mandibles are sharp and my belly hungry. Bring in the infants that I might slake my abhorrent thirsts.”

Despite the progress that has been made, many observers are predicting that the peace that has been brokered will be a fragile one. On Sunday morning, on the outskirts of the Sussex village of Piddinghoe, a small skirmish broke out over whether the War should be commemorated with red or white poppies. The word ‘Imperialist’ was spray-painted on a telephone box before a library was set on fire in quick reprisal. Many more such incidents can be expected before peace truly settles in.

There are even reports that some will not accept the hard-won peace. Former Commandant Laurence Fox, the second highest ranking General of the BBC army, is said to be stationed in a bunker on the Isle of Man, where he has either not been told or simply refuses to acknowledge the ceasefire. He will not be alone. No contact has been made with Julia Hartley-Brewer’s submarine for more than three weeks.

Speaking to civilians – those who have been victims of the violence, displaced by the upheavals, or simply mildly inconvenienced by having the same episode of Fawlty Towers repeated on their televisions for the last year – they remain unclear as to why any of this happened in the first place.

“I don’t understand any of it,” said Clive Purloin, a roadworks engineer, who was caught briefly in the crossfire as rival groups clashed in Liverpool over whether Ken Dodd was a fascist whose statue should be toppled. “Really. Not a clue.”

It is a view shared by virtually everyone.

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It was like this but much, much stupider. ----------------

[1] Only belatedly realising, to their incandescent, bovine fury, that this meant they shared an acronym with an organisation purportedly representing everything that they despised. Attempts to rename the group were prevented by them having entered into a two-year contract for the website domain

[ogygia]

What the fuck is the LBRP? appendix: FAQs

I promised in my guide to the LBRP that I’d deal with some miscellaneous points in a separate post. Because so much of it comes in the form of questions, I’ve decided to present in the form of FAQs! 

(Source)

Here goes ...

1. I read your guide and it was interesting and stuff, but isn’t the LBRP just a fancy way of banishing, casting a circle and calling the quarters? It’s not really that special.

Technically, you’re not wrong. But you’ve put the cart before the horse. The butter before the bread. The jam before the clotted cream (fellow Brits will not argue this point with me). Because the likelihood is that modern pagan notions of banishing, casting a circle and calling the quarters (in that order) probably derived from the LBRP, rather than vice versa.

Now’s a good time to remind ourselves that Gerald Gardner, the father of the modern witchcraft revival – and the person who introduced the term ‘Wicca’ into the fold – probably borrowed heavily from Freemasonry and (shock, horror) Aleister Crowley himself. There’s no real reason why modern (organised) Wicca should have a degree system, or employ specific liturgy or ceremonies: these are likely to be based on a Masonic template, with some influence from the Great Beast’s writings. One of the early manuscripts of Wiccan material contain rituals and quotations copied from Crowley and the Golden Dawn, though what this tells us about the actual nature of Crowley and Gardner’s relationship is a matter of debate. 

Either way, the whole procedure of banishing, casting a circle and calling the quarters you find in a lot of post-Wicca witchcraft may have its derivation in the LBRP itself, or at least late Victorian occultism. Remember, I’m not saying these practices themselves, on their own terms, originate from the LBRP; I know that banishing is a thing all over the world, as is circle-casting (which has a long history in the grimoire tradition), as is calling the quarters (in Taoist craft, for instance, the four directions are invoked as well). What I’m saying is that the recognised ritual procedure in modern witchcraft which involves all three steps probably has a ceremonial origin, so it would be putting the cart before the horse to dismiss the LBRP as a glorified circle-casting procedure, without recognising its role as an original model for modern Wiccan-based practice. 

I’d suggest using the right tools for the right purposes: you wouldn’t kill a fly with a shotgun (not that you can’t). If you want to banish, actually banish. If you want to cast a circle, cast a circle. If you want to call the quarters, actually call them. Familiarise yourself with various non-ceremonial methods for doing these things – Gemma Gary and Nigel Pearson are a good source of information – and experiment. It’ll probably do a lot more for you than a quaint Victorian procedure based in badly appropriated Kabbalah.

In fact, you might find out that your craft only needs one or two of these steps, or none at all. Depending on tradition and the kind of work you’re doing, you may not need to formally banish, or cast a circle, or call the quarters, as long as you’re maintaining good spiritual hygiene, and/or already have a good working relationship with the spirits. 

2. Should I use a wand to do the LBRP? Or a dagger? Or will my finger do? Is there a difference? 

The First Knowledge Lecture of the Golden Dawn instructs the student to use ‘a steel dagger in the right hand’; Crowley in Liber O says to ‘make a pentagram ... with the proper weapon (usually the Wand)’. So basically, you can use whatever the fuck you want, especially if you don’t care for either the Golden Dawn or Crowley. Or try it with different things over a period of time and see how it feels. Experiment, make notes, see what works.

Advanced-level thoughts: I suspect Crowley diverges from the Golden Dawn because of the centrality of Will to his philosophy of magick. The steel dagger in the GD version appears to be a more functional, or perhaps less fussy alternative to the Magical Sword, which according to The Golden Dawn ‘is used in all cases where great force and strength are to be used and are required, but principally for banishing and for defence against evil forces’.

For Crowley, however, ‘The Magick Wand is ... the principal weapon of the Magus; and the "name" of that wand is the Magical Oath.’ (Liber ABA, Part II, Chapter VI). I feel it entirely appropriate that the Wand is the more Thelemic approach, not just because of Crowley’s phallic obsessions but mainly because asserting one’s individuality and celebrating one’s True Will is so central to Thelema. To employ the Wand in one of ceremonial magick’s key rituals symbolically reinforces the sovereignty of the Magus and their True Will over their universe.

3. Ew, Christian stuff! Can I change the names/symbols/words because I had a bad childhood experience with Christianity/hate Christians/hate God/ love the Goddess and want to do a Goddess version/don’t want anything to do with the Judeo-Christian system/am rebellious and just want to be different?

Short answer: Did you read the fucking guide?

Long answer: Listen, you can do whatever the fuck you want. Just don’t call it the LBRP, or claim that it’s ‘the same thing’, or works the same way.

Much has already been said about this elsewhere, but your knee-jerk reaction to Judeo-Christian elements in ceremonial magick reveal a lot more about you than it does the ritual. We know the LBRP is rooted in a Kabbalistic tradition; your feelings towards it doesn’t change its effectiveness for generations of practitioners. 

You don’t need to use the LBRP if you’re not comfortable. I don’t even use it that much these days. My only advice to you is to i) not be dismissive about it, especially in the presence of newbies and inquiring beginners; ii) recognise that the LBRP is a whole ecosystem of a ritual in itself, and simply changing the names and words willy-nilly and claiming it to be a legitimate alternative is at best misguided, at worst misleading for others. 

Being an asshole: ‘Why would you want to use a ritual that calls out to an oppressive God? Here, I wrote a version where the names are all replaced by pagan deities, and calls on the Goddess. It’s the same, in fact, it’s better. Fuck Xtianity.’

Not being an asshole: ‘Hmm, I would suggest you research it carefully before deciding whether to use it or not, but if you prefer something non-Christian, as I would, why not try X method to banish, or doing Y to cast a circle, so you avoid the whole ceremonial thing altogether – if that’s what you’re looking for?’

My point being, I don’t care if you don’t like the LBRP. I care if you poison the mind of impressionable new seekers with your own knee-jerk prejudices.

That said, there are certain alternatives that in my opinion are legitimate, or close enough in effect, or possess a similar potentiality:

The Olympic Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (notes) – I personally think this is an excellent alternative, especially for those who work within a Greco-Roman paradigm, or a Gnostic/Neoplatonic framework.

The Star Ruby – You’ll probably be aware of this one already if you know your Crowley. Frankly, this is not recommended to anyone who isn’t already working in a Thelemic context.

I can’t think of any other ones right now, but I’ll post them if I come across any.

4. Okay, in your guide I’ve noticed that you can use an Invoking pentagram. How does that work?

One thing I didn’t have space to clarify in the original guide is that the LBRP is not in fact a ritual; it is a variant of a ritual. Think of the structure of the LBRP as a basic template; you can adapt the template for different purposes by drawing the pentagrams in different ways. You can use the LRP (as the basic ritual is called) to invoke or banish any of the five elements, including Spirit; but, as explained in the guide, Earth is chosen as the basic banishing variant because it deals with influences in the mundane sphere of existence.

I didn’t go through the Golden Dawn system myself but as far as I’m aware, part of the work in the outer order involves invoking the elements separately using the LRP and recording what differences they make in your life. I imagine you can easily adapt this to raise specific elemental energies for specific purposes, but I feel like there’s a lot more power in using the planets for practical purposes anyway, rather than the elements. But that’s another discussion.

Also, if you’re wondering, there is indeed a Greater version of the ritual, and in fact there’s also a Supreme version of the ritual, but you don’t need to bother with those unless you’re a Golden-Dawn-type ceremonialist and/or want to work with Enochian energies. And there’s also a hexagram version of the ritual, but I’ll discuss that in a separate guide, perhaps ...

5. This has all been very interesting! Any resources on the ritual that you might suggest, so I can do further research?

Lists! I love lists. My thoughts on useful resources for the LBRP:

To begin with, the aforementioned First Knowledge Lecture is always worth looking through.

Crowley’s ‘Notes on the Ritual of the Pentagram’ – a surprisingly short essay for a usually verbose man, but succinctly explains some of the key mechanics of how the ritual works, and how to perform it properly. Can get a bit technical.

Thelema and Skepticism’s blog post on the LBRP – the blogger in question here has very strong views about what Thelema is or isn’t and I’ve seen him get caught up in all kinds of drama on forums, but his post on the LBRP is one of the best and most comprehensive discussions of the ritual I’ve ever seen. Read with a critical mind, of course, but this is about as orthodox an explanation of the ritual as it gets.

Mark Stavish’s Additional Notes on the LBRP – an excellent, if occasionally jargon-y, further discussion of the ritual, including thoughts on how the angels might be visualised, based on Golden Dawn colour correspondences.

Scott Michael Stenwick’s blog post on the LBRP – a miscellaneous collection of thoughts on the ritual, including some brilliant myth-busting. Stenwick is an excellent magical blogger and his work on the method of the operant field is frankly brilliant. Honestly, I just recommend his whole blog. 

Not directly relevant, and a book, but Lon Milo DuQuette’s The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford is a top-notch and very funny introduction to the Hermetic Kabbalah – i.e. the Kabbalah as it is used in the Western ceremonial tradition.

That’s it, folks. There’s more to be said, but probably as miscellaneous throwaway conversations when they arise. I emphasise my earlier point that I write this from my own understanding of and experiences with the ritual, and therefore don’t expect everyone to agree with all of my points. Feel free to send me asks or something if you have any questions or thoughts.

#occult #ceremonial magick #lbrp #lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram #guides #faqs

[junck-ritter]

hunlarpfag asks:

​Do you know anything / have sources about what kind of "training" or level of expertise the very average guy could have with swords or other weapons, let's say kind of late 15th century germany? I mean obviously we have to differentiate between various kinds of peasants, towns people, full citizens, nobles, etc but it's as good of a conversation starter as any

I know a little. There’s big problems getting reliable information on it but there is a bit. I have read a lot into this but definitely not extensively. I will try to summarise what I’ve found so far.

This is gonna be a huge post, but it’s a huge question. If you read this whole thing you will have a pretty good idea of why fencing manuscripts never appeared until mid 1300s-1400s, as well. It may not be 150% correct, but I’ve substantiated everything to a reasonable standard and would love to hear counterpoints if anyone has any.

I would say that the level of training and conditioning that medieval and early renaissance people had would hinge on a few axis. The first one which remains quite constant through this whole period is social class. 

You had peasants at the low end, nobility at the high end, and through the middle of the spectrum there were monastic classes and as the 14th and 15th century rolled on, an emerging middle class of city-dwelling proto-modern people, who did modern things like own their houses, have professions, and do things for fun in their spare time.

Before the rumblings of the renaissance started to make their impressions on physical culture around 1350+, the approach to physical training altogether was pretty poor for anyone outside the nobility. The reasons are complex but in summary it looks something like this:

The monasteries had a very influential position in terms of cultural transmission and dissemination of knowledge. They were the ones who were reading and writing most of all, and a non-trivial amount of cash was tied up there. They were also responsible for schooling of anyone but nobles.

Their primary concern was spiritual. If you accept Hegelian dialectic theory, in this period there was a swing of the pendulum as far away as possible from the excesses of Rome. Things like gladiator/olympic games were considered paganistic idolatry, and a reckless obsession with the worldly body to the detriment of the spirit. Physical education was not part of the 7 arts taught at universities traditionally.

Physical health was not totally disregarded of course, except maybe by some monks wanting to live an ascetic lifestyle. The prevailing idea seemed to be fitness to do your duties was good, but excess was a bit too much like worship of the material body. This is probably what made it OK for knights etc. to train, as it was a duty.

Peasant class generally didn’t produce much demand for physical culture. They would participate in festivals watching or joining in with dances and acrobats, but since armaments weren’t commonly available to them, fencing etc. would not be too common. Probably a little wrestling and stone throwing, but even then it was only on holidays and festival days. The social standings of the peasant class didn’t afford them much room to take up strenuous training programs for their own enjoyment usually.

In those earlier days the knights and nobility would be educated in a completely different way. From around the age of 14 they would be taught reading, proper speech, etc. Eventually taking up riding, dancing and some acrobatics. As time went on and they became a squire they’d do pretty hardcore military training. There was an expectation that a knight could mount their horse, in armour, without assistance of a stepping block or even using the stirrups. A knight should also be able to “hang” from their horse to pick things up from the ground, and would be expected to participate in competitions of physical prowess.

The nobility would also be training their riding and pursuit skills in the hunt, and this tradition stretches all the way back to ancient times. Hunting was considered extremely important part of military preparedness, and of course, the peasant class had no access to this activity and would be punished if they committed themselves to it. (Sidenote, there were eventually organised movements rebelling against this tyranny on theological grounds, and they gained some amount of momentum in the early renaissance, opening up the hunt a little more to classes under the nobility)

The Annales Lamberti of 1075 written by a Hessian, comments that the peasant class is generally unfit for military service, in contrast with professional soldiers. This might seem quite obvious, but the contrast was stark enough for some thinkers to suggest that using levies was un-economical. This is much earlier than the time period we are dealing with, but hold that thought because I will contrast it as we go on.

As time rolled on through the 14th and 15th centuries, things changed. Economics were different in the later middle ages and early renaissance. True city life started to exist for really complex reasons I myself only have a basic grasp on. I will summarise the changes that happened within the scope of physical and martial training as best I can:

More people began to live in cities. Their standards of living improved, population density increased, people began to have more free time and with it, excess resources at their disposal. This is the so-called “Burgher” class. With this, came a demand for recreational activities, and a market for them.

Guild system started to gain more and more influence on city life, while the influences of the clergy and state relatively dropped. Things started to decentralise and be driven more by market than by planning, including laws etc.

Reading and writing became less the domain of the monasteries. Important developments like paper and printing meant more people could benefit from reading and writing. There was in general an explosion of books on secular topics in conjunction with these developments, physicality and military topics were part of that. More people were generally getting themselves educated.

In the urban centres, there was special demand for certain kinds of physical activity. People didn’t have as much room for recreational shooting or running or swimming so there was increased demand for specialised activities which could be practised in smaller spaces. Fencing was one of those.

Along with these changes, universities started offering more physical activities to their content. Along with the spread of written information, fetishisation of the old hellenistic and roman athletic competitions and gladiator events became popular among the middle class. I.33 has been theorised by many to be connected to university fencing. One of the earliest known fencing fraternities can be traced to 1386 at Heidelberg university. By the year 1487 the first imperial license was granted for fencing.

In the middle of the 15th century Vittorino de Feltre founded a school which exemplified the idea of “L'uomo universale” - The universal man. The idea was that a human should take care of themselves holistically, mind/body/spirit all as one, which is in contrast to the approach of the monastics mentioned earlier. This was a relatively new idea at the time inspired by classical civilisation (again probably spurred on by more people having access to classics) and this is reflected in the activities carried out at the school, which included discus and shotting stones, javelin, wrestling and running, as well as fencing and mock battles.

At some point around the 1430s, The Ritterspiegel was written. This might be our best single source for how a knight was expected to be trained in 15th century Germany. It details that the knightly class were expected to be good at 7 things: Riding, swimming, climbing ropes and ladders, shooting crossbows, jousting, wrestling and jumping, and courtesy/table manners/dancing.

Basically, a knight in active military service would have usually been incredibly physically fit, training all these things as part of their job. Fighting ability is hard to quantify exactly, but we know that knights prized taking their opponents without killing them, and without resorting to projectile weapons, with sources from France indicating the latter fairly directly. It is totally likely that knights in active service would be good with hand to hand confrontation.

As the middle ages progressed, middle classes would participate in almost all of the “knightly” activities with the common exception of the tournaments. There is even some evidence that middle and lower classes used equipment similar to that which knights would train the joust with at times.

During the 15th century, particularly in Germany, a formalised system of town watch matured. As urbanised people had more and more exposure to physical training, more excess resources, and political situations within the empire changed (think free cities + feuds etc) the idea of using the citizenry as a defense force became viable.

This developed to such an extent, it became quite common that physical training and the maintenance of basic arms was a requirement for citizenship. Initially guilds would provide the central organisation for maintaining town armouries and training which would be called into action by ringing bells and raising flags when shit was about to go down. It is entirely likely that guys like Paulus Kal would be working in this kind of environment.

At this time the peasantry in the country started to mimic the civic defense organisational structure of the cities. Sources for this are naturally more scarce but the evidence we have seems to point to defense organisation of the country being less organised and less equipped than the cities (duh).

The next shift to happen was citizens being responsible for their own training and organisation. As the 15th century was drawing to a close, people living in urban centres would be expected to keep their own weapons in their own house, and be ready at short notice to present for duty. Citizens were obliged to buy their own gear, and in an emergency men would need to rally in the square while women, children, and the infirm would barricade buildings and prepare for firefighting.

At this point training was a little decentralised. Households of a street would be managed by an officer who was responsible for that street, each of whom would report to a quarter master for each district of the city, who in turn would be answerable to the captain of the guild (one, Peter Falkner, left us a fencing manuscript in the 1490s)

The normal equipment of this time for citizens on duty would vary from town to town and year to year, but most commonly it would be expected that a citizen could, when asked to, present themselves in a breastplate and simple helmet, with a polearm, a spear or probably more commonly a halberd, and a crossbow or gun. Many would also have owned swords as they were legal for citizens to carry. Polearms and projectile weapons were either forbidden from day-to-day carry, or were a mark of somebody looking to cause trouble, while a sword was a perfectly fashionable and acceptable weapon to carry with you everywhere (unless you were unlucky enough to be born a Jew, Woman, or non-citizen)

In the 15th century the Fechtschule, often coupled with a shooting competition, was a somewhat regular occurrence, and these activities were popular leisure activities for Burgher class which provided an added benefit of military preparedness, and so they were supported or at least tolerated by the state. 

Of course shooting competitions grew more and more in popularity while fencing phased out of favour. We can read the complaints of P.H. Mair and J. Meyer about the dying breed of skilled fencers, most opting to practise their shooting instead.

What this kind of points to is we had a relatively short window in history where “common” middle class people were making themselves proficient with medieval weapons and fencing. Prior to that, fencing was of course practised, but firstly, we have no records of it, and secondly it was probably largely the domain of the upper classes of society, where fencing on foot was almost certainly of secondary importance to finesse in riding, use of the lance. and broader military concerns.

It would seem that in earlier periods, folk traditions of wrestling, boxing, and stick-fighting occupied the peasant classes, but comments from contemporaries indicate their viability as a fighting force was severely limited by their general fitness (and perhaps by extension the competence and methodology of their fighting education). This tradition seems to have continued with the lowest classes of society into the early renaissance, but as time advances, the middle class urban human comprises a greater segment of society as a whole, and certainly of people engaged in fighting arts. While we see a reasonably consistent body of artwork and literature about military and tournament deeds, information of the practical points of fighting is very lacking until the 15th century.

So I will reiterate on the point at the very beginning. The likelihood that someone in late medieval and early renaissance time had any exposure to physical or martial training, pretty much depends on their class. The 15th century is of peculiar importance and the effects of that can be seen in the record of information we have on fencing, wrestling, and so on. 

We can be almost certain that the way nobles and citizens were trained for “fighting” was quite different. It is tempting to group fiore, vadi, and the “blume des kampfes” into a noble military tradition while Liechtenauer and the other German and English treatises may have supported a burgher class (despite commentaries on Liechtenauer making lofty claims about their fighting system being the secret and sole property of the nobility) - we of course have no direct evidence for that. But the duality for sure existed.

As for peasants, fuckin’, I’ll conclude by saying it would really suck to be born one of those guys.

#hema #fencing #history #fighting #combat #medieval #sociology #class

[iriscomplimentarymedicine]

Iris publishers-Online Journal of Complementary & Alternative Medicine(OJCAM)

The Need for a Deeper Notion of Holism in Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Authored by  Hans A Baer*

I am writing this opinion piece from my perspective as a critical health and ecological anthropologist who has grappled since around 1980 with various CAM systems, particularly osteopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, in the US, UK, and Australia, and more recently since 2005 with anthropogenic climate change. Both CAM and critical health anthropology are committed to the notion of holistic health and perhaps even planetary health, albeit in different ways. In reality, CAM is an amorphous category created by progressive biomedical physicians responding to the growing popularity of a wide array of alternative or heterodox health medical systems which found common cause under the umbrella of the holistic health movement in the 1970s [1]. Integrative medicine also arose as a biomedical construction to supposedly blend the best elements of biomedicine and CAM and also adopted the notion of holism, but some would argue to co-opt various CAM systems [2,3]. What is desperately needed is an examination of how the various CAM systems define holistic health and health care. Nevertheless, my sense in having examined various CAM systems and medical pluralism for four decades is that CAM practitioners tend to view holism in terms of making mind-body-spirit connections, but often tend to either neglect or downplay the role of political, economic, and social structural, and environmental factors in disease etiology. Needless to say, there are exceptions to his observations. For example, the School of Natural and Complementary Medicine at Southern Cross University in Australia developed a Basic Model of (W)holistic Medicine in 1999 which recognises six elements in whole-person care: (1) physical, (2) mental, (3), spiritual, (4) family, (5) community, and (6) environment [4].

Critical health anthropology (CHA), formerly referred to as critical medical anthropology (CHA), understands health issues within the context of political and economic forces [5]. These forces are institutional, national, and global in scale. They pattern human relationships, shape social behaviours, condition collective experiences, reorder local ecologies, and situated cultural meanings. The emergence of CHA reflects both the turn toward political-economic and political-ecological approaches in anthropology in general beginning in the 1960s, a period of social ferment around the globe, as well as an effort to engage with and extend the larger political economy of health approach. CHA seeks to provide a perspective and set of concepts for analysing macrointermediate- micro or global-national-local connections. At the macro level are the power relations of the capitalist world system and its associated corporate and state sectors coupled with plural medical systems; at the intermediate level are health institutions such as hospitals and clinics; and at the micro level are the healerpatient relationship and the patient experience.

CHA asserts that health ultimately must take precedence over health care, because the latter often comes into play once disease or illness has occurred. Critical health anthropologists define health in terms of access to and control over the basic material and nonmaterial resources that sustain and promote life at a high level of well-being. In essence, health is an elastic concept that must be considered within a larger sociocultural context. It is the product of a dialectical interaction of natural, political-economic, and sociocultural forces.

Disease or illness also varies from society to society, in some because of climatic and geographic conditions, but in large part because of the ways resources and productive activities are organised. It is not just the straightforward result of a pathogen, physiological, or anatomical disturbance as argued by biomedicine. Rather it is a result of a variety of social structural conditions all of which are ultimately roots in the capitalist world system with its emphasis on profit-making, continual economic growth, and a treadmill of production and construction that place tremendous pressure on the planetary ecosystem. Thus, disease and illness can result from malnutrition, social stratification, economic insecurity, alienation in the workplace, occupational risks, industrial and motor vehicle pollution, inferior housing, poor sanitation, the stress of everyday life, and environmental and climatic degradation.

CHA argues that the achievement of health with authentically and pluralistic health care requires the transcendence of global capitalism. It argues for the construction of a global democratic ecosocialist order that combines the principles of public ownership of the means of production, social equality, centralism, decentralism, representative and participatory democracy, environmental sustainability, and a safe climate [6]. CHA contends that progressive people, including health care workers, need to come to terms with both the achievements of post-revolutionary societies and to reconceptualize the notion of socialism. It recognizes that we live on an ecologically fragile planet with limited resources that must be shared and sustained and renewed for future generations. Ultimately, the shift to democratic eco-socialism would have to be part and parcel of global process that no one can fully envision.

Given the small size of complementary and alternative medicine in the various countries where it exists, CAM practitioners need to join forces with progressive biomedical practitioners as part of a larger process of advancing an authentically holistic health paradigm that recognizes that health and disease are ultimately embedded in political, economic, social structural, and ecological processes. Howard Waitzkin, a critical sociologist and progressive biomedical physician, argues: “Because of the powerful economic and political interests that dominate the health care system, the alternative movement cannot succeed unless it connects itself to broader political activism as well” [7]. In the US context, the creation of a universal health care system could pave the way to provide CAM therapies to working-class and poor people. In the case of countries with nationalized health care, such as Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, CAM therapies could be incorporated into an integrative health system in which biomedical and CAM practitioners work as co-equals in a collaborative relationship that blends an emphasis on both preventive and curative care. The larger struggle, however, is the creation of nationalized and holistic integrative health care systems in all countries as part of the struggle for a healthy planet.

To read more about this article: https://irispublishers.com/ojcam/fulltext/the-need-for-a-deeper-notion-of-holism-in-complementary-and-alternative-medicine.ID.000625.php

Indexing List of Iris Publishers: https://medium.com/@irispublishers/what-is-the-indexing-list-of-iris-publishers-4ace353e4eee

Iris publishers google scholar citations:

https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=irispublishers&btnG=

#Peer reviewed journals of Traditional Medicine #traditional medicine #Complementary Medicine #high impact factor journals of complementary medicine

[msclaritea]

~Napoleon, Nietzsche & TFP~

A Study In Holmesian Iconoclasm: Masks & Images P.2

This is the final part of a series that looked into the canon story The Six Napoleons, resulting in mary-resurrects-lucretia & sherlock-on-the-ocean-when-neitzsche-wept. In the story, someone is running around, smashing Napoleon busts. Strange enough, but even more so when you find out that this has all happened before. Arthur Conan Doyle was masterful, it seems, at embedding real-life people and true tales of History in the Holmes stories. Iconoclasm is the social belief in the importance of the destruction of usually religious icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons…In Political and revolutionary iconoclasm, revolutions, and changes of regime, whether through uprising of the local population, foreign invasion, or a combination of both, are often accompanied by the public destruction of statues and monuments identified with the previous regime.

During the French Revolution, the statue of Napoleon on the column at Place Vendôme, Paris was the target of iconoclasm several times: destroyed after the Bourbon Restoration, and during the Paris Commune.

Napoleon loomed large as a political figure in the 19th century. The artists of subsequent periods were a mix of elevating his image…or smashing it. Napoleonic Iconoclasm is an actual known trope, as he evolved into a mythical figure during the Romantic Period.

“Such a fact must tell against the theory that the man who breaks them is influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering how many hundreds of statues of the great Emperor must exist in London, it is too much to suppose such a coincidence as that a promiscuous iconoclast should chance to begin upon three specimens of the same bust.“  

The Adventure of The Six Napoleons touches on true political history, and the image of Napoleon intertwines with the enduring quality of Holmes. Moriarty was not called ‘The Napoleon of Crime’, for nothing. He was created as a nemesis to Holmes; his mirror image, for his eventual death. But whereas Moriarty died, Sherlock Holmes, like Napoleon, was ‘banished’, only to return, and be celebrated, while once again, taking control of ACD’s career. 

“Privately, he has become something of a villain, over time, tyrannically taking control of Doyle’s writing, and his endlessly-replicated heroic figure invited smashing.” This quote, from The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes:  "Shattering the pedestrian image of reason is Holmes’s great iconoclastic gift.“ "His reasoning is obsessive, impulsive, unpredictable, astonishing.” Holmes displays much enthusiasm and dramatic flair in The Six Thatchers, and “When the blow of the riding crop shatters the image so long sought, and reveals the pearl inside, all subsequent explanations seem a footnote. That blow is this story’s symbolic representation of reason’s power, and that single gesture sums up the transvaluation (re-evaluating of the values) of reason’s image that Sherlock Holmes has wrought.“ It’s part of my theory that BBC Sherlock is engaging Holmesian Iconoclasm; in a literary sense, breaking the man down to his most basic parts, taking him into dark places in an experiment of re-integration, using the teachings of Nietzsche in Season 4, as a way of aligning his moral code for the world we live in now. What ARE the sum of his parts?

The Question: Sherlock and Theseus’s Paradox by Dennis O’ Neil

"An Ancient Greek named Theseus…builds a ship. Over time the ship needs repairs and pieces of it have to be replaced and finally everything has been replaced. Not a single splinter of the original craft remains. Which brings us to what is known in some circles as Theseus’s Paradox. We ask: Is the ship our man Theseus ends with the same one that he built years earlier?”

In The Beginning: Birth & The Bi-Part Soul                       

Below is an excerpt from a thesis The Influence of Duality and Poe’s Notion of the Bi-Part Soul’ on the Genesis of Detective Fiction in the Nineteenth-Century by Stephanie Craighill. It is a lengthy, beautiful piece on the genesis of the creation of what we refer to as the Mirrors. Like Nietzsche, Poe and Doyle held strong belief in Duality/Dualism/Balance, and used that belief, NOT just when structuring characters, but the stories themselves.

"Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin; the creative and the resolvent." Poe‘s explicit reference to the double‘ directly intertwines with the theme of duality which resonates throughout the Gothic novel and the Romantic Movement in nineteenth century fiction; this paradigm is evident in texts such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s Faust, Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein…This motif has been extensively examined by scholars and has been defined using numerous but vague classifications which include the fictional double‘, the evil twin‘, the alter ego‘, the antithetical self‘, the fragmentation of self into dual‘ and the twin soul‘. Dupin reproaches the Prefect of the Parisian police for being too cunning to be profound‘,

(which mirrors the game of chess where what is complex is mistaken for what is profound‘. The detective, also, rebukes the Prefect‘s wisdom‘ for being all head and no body‘ which relates to the detective‘s earlier supposition that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic‘ The Prefect‘s reasoning is too fanciful‘ to be successful.  It is through the combined use of both aspects of the Bi Part Soul‘, the head‘ and the body‘ and their associated faculties of the imagination and reason, that the detective was able to outwit his opponent.)

Duality is implicit in the structure and characterization of The Murders in the Rue Morgue‘.  It is visible in the tale‘s twin plot, the divided self which is the narrator and Dupin, the doubling of the criminals, victims and detective and most prominently the detective‘s creative and resolvent‘ Bi-Part Soul‘.  Dupin‘s dual psychology is associated with moral ambiguity and a blurring of boundaries which, consequently, has shaped a compelling psychosomatic template for a genre of multifaceted and complex detective protagonists. Holmes‘ inherent dualism is summarised by Iain Sinclair and Ed Glinert who state that:   Holmes is the classically divided man that the age required: alchemist and rigorous experimenter, furious walker and definitive slacker, athlete and dope fiend.  He could, as the mood took him, be Trappist or motor mouth … Holmes is forever lurching between incompatible polarities. From the beginning Holmes was a double figure, first in himself as the mixture of scientist and poet and even more significantly in the double figure of Sherlock Holmes Doctor Watson‘. Conan Doyle‘s implicit doubling of Poe‘s detective trilogy extends further; like Dupin who doubles the criminals in The Murders in the Rue Morgue‘ and the thief Minister D. in The Purloined Letter‘, Holmes represents a doppelgänger for his arch nemesis, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.  Moriarty only directly appears in two of the sixty Holmes accounts; in the short story The Final Problem‘ and the novella The Valley of Fear, though he is mentioned in a selection of the other narratives. In these two accounts we learn that Moriarty shares a number of common characteristics with Holmes. He is of similar physical appearance, has a phenomenal mathematical faculty‘, is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker‘ and a scientific criminal‘ Moriarty conforms to the same Bi-Part‘ mould as the detectives Holmes and Dupin; he is both reasoned and artistic. In The Final Problem‘ Holmes refers to Moriarty as the organiser of half that is evil. Moriarty could characterize an inversion of the values embodied by Holmes‘ and, as a result, the criminal represents the detective‘s doppelgänger who is equipped with an identical skill set but motivated by an evil purpose."

Context: Paralleling the Works of Nietzsche and Sherlock

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

Thus Spake Zarathustra: Sherlock On The Ocean:

"The above piece was written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley. Perhaps most famous is Henley’s closing statement: “I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul.” The poem is a declaration of the triumph of the human spirit - the refusal to bend to a universe Henley called “a place of wrath and tears. Holmes was an unprecedented sort of hero. Emerging from a culture enthralled by scientific progress, he was a superhero who relied almost entirely on his powers of deduction…Holmes was and is the sensationalized personification of Henley’s captain of the soul. His powers of deduction are presented as the triumph of reason, a triumph open to all of humanity if we’d only try a little harder. In this way, Sherlock Holmes is Nietzsche’s “superman” (a term coined in Thus Spake Zarathustra, written a few years before A Study in Scarlet). He is the moral, observational and logical evolution of mankind.

The Übermensch is Nietzsche’s concept of the ideal, and it can translate to overman, superman, above human, and probably some other things. The Übermensch doesn’t have incredible physical abilities. Instead, his power is mental and spiritual. The greatest power in the world, according to Nietzsche, is freedom, and I’m about to make a huge and tragic over-simplification of Nietzsche’s theory as to what that means. It is that complete human freedom is achieved by radically breaking with all forms of guilt, shame, and external authority. It combines many qualities of a completely naïve and fearless toddler with those of an experienced and wise elder."

Sherlock: Isn't that...one of those Law things?

"In the first or second episode a minor character calls him a sociopath, and the show really delves into the question of what actually makes Holmes and Moriarty (a really evil criminal who is as good at crime as Holmes is at solving crimes) different from each other aside from pure occupational interests. The sociopath comment was my first clue. Critics of Nietzsche’s philosophy have always contended that his Übermensch would really be a sociopath who just looks out for number one. What is useful in making the connection between Sherlock Holmes and Nietzsche’s work is that I think the Holmes series provides a picture into how the Übermensch doesn’t necessarily play out as a sociopath.“

"He can’t stand the boredom of the day to day, the absurd. And it is just like any good German existentialist to value present experience over the longevity of life. Furthermore, he is completely open about his habit with Dr. Watson, who is initially very concerned. His openness about it shows that Holmes gives no credibility to prescriptions other than his own as to what constitutes a good life.

His passion happens to be for forensic science, or the “science of deduction,” as Holmes calls it. The key, though, is that he throws everything he has got into what he truly cares about, leaving no room for time wasters like social obligations, civic engagement, parties, etc. Dr. Watson even finds that Holmes isn’t aware that the Earth revolves around the sun, since it has no use for his forensic studies.”

“There is an old illusion—it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion.

Once did one believe in soothsayers and astrologers; and therefore did one believe, "Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!”

Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and therefore did one believe, “Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou willest!”

O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto been only illusion, and not knowledge; and therefore concerning good and evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge!" Thus Spake Zarathustra

”On Nietzsche: While most of his contemporaries looked on the late nineteenth century with unbridled optimism, confident in the progress of science and the rise of the German state, Nietzsche saw his age facing a fundamental crisis in values. With the rise of science, the Christian worldview no longer held a prominent explanatory role in people’s lives, a view Nietzsche captures in the phrase “God is dead.” However, science does not introduce a new set of values to replace the Christian values it displaces. Nietzsche rightly foresaw that people need to identify some source of meaning and value in their lives, and if they could not find it in science, they would turn to aggressive nationalism and other such salves. The last thing Nietzsche would have wanted was a return to traditional Christianity, however. Instead, he sought to find a way out of nihilism through the creative and willful affirmation of life.“

The Gay Science: Nietzsche’s first consideration of the idea of the eternal recurrence

“What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ […] Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”

This was one of the themes of Shakespeare’s No Fear Sonnets 1-60, some of which have been found embedded and acted out in the show. 59 is heavy with this theme and found in The Six Thatchers. “Not only does Nietzsche posit that the universe is recurring over infinite time and space, but that the different versions of events that have occurred in the past may at one point or another take place again, hence "all configurations that have previously existed on this earth must yet meet…” And with each version of events is hoping that some knowledge or awareness is gained to better the individual, hence “And thus it will happen one day that a man will be born again, just like me and a woman will be born, just like Mary—only that it is hoped to be that the head of this man may contain a little less foolishness…”

The Antichrist, originally published in 1895

MARY: Hm. Now you’d think we’d have noticed, when she was born. JOHN: Hm? Noticed what? MARY: The little 666 on her forehead. JOHN: Hmhmhm, that’s The Omen. MARY: (lifts her head to look at him with a frown, stays like that though John’s entire answer) So? JOHN: Well, you said it was like The Exorcist. They’re two different things. You can’t be the Devil and the Antichrist.

“Nietzsche writes scathingly about Christianity, arguing that it is fundamentally opposed to life. In Christian morality, Nietzsche sees an attempt to deny all those characteristics that he associates with healthy life. The concept of sin makes us ashamed of our instincts and our sexuality, the concept of faith discourages our curiosity and natural skepticism, and the concept of pity encourages us to value and cherish weakness. Furthermore, Christian morality is based on the promise of an afterlife, leading Christians to devalue this life in favor of the beyond. Nietzsche argues that Christianity springs from resentment for life and those who enjoy it, and it seeks to overthrow health and strength with its life-denying ethic. As such, Nietzsche considers Christianity to be the hated enemy...Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious."

Sherlock: This hospital is full of people dying, doctor, why don’t you go and cry by their bedsides, see what good it does.

Nietzsche claimed that the Christian religion and its morality are based on imaginary fictions. Concept of morality is falsified. Morality is no longer an expression of life and growth. Instead, morality opposes life by presenting well–being as a dangerous temptation. Priestly agitators “… interpret all good fortune as a reward, all misfortune as punishment for disobedience of God, for 'sin,’…The sacred book formulates the will of God and specifies what is to be given to the priests. Priests become parasites.”…All things of life are so ordered that the priest is everywhere indispensable; at all the natural events of life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death. Not to speak of 'sacrifice’ (meal–times)…Natural values become utterly valueless. The priest sanctifies and bestows all value. Disobedience of God (the priest) is 'sin.’ Subjection to God (the priest) is redemption. Priests use 'sin’ to gain and hold power. 

Sherlock: …And contrast is, after all, God’s own plan to enhance the beauty of his creation. Or it would be if God were not a ludicrous fantasy designed to provide a career opportunity for the family idiot.

*Interesting footnote about the first part of this statement. Goethe, from whom Nietzche gets the word Ubermensch, apparently actually invented the Color Wheel. THIS video shows how he used light, shadow and a color to enhance the beauty of another.

“The Truth’s Boring!”

“Nietzsche is critical of the very idea of objective truth. That we should think there is only one right way of considering a matter is only evidence that we have become inflexible in our thinking. Such intellectual inflexibility is a symptom of saying “no” to life, a condition that Nietzsche abhors. A healthy mind is flexible and recognizes that there are many different ways of considering a matter. There is no single truth but rather many.”

“Because You’re an Idiot”

"Nietzsche thought that the word idiot best described Jesus. According to Walter Kaufmann, he might have been referring to the naïve protagonist of  Dostoyevsky’s book The Idiot. “The fable of Christ as miracle–worker and redeemer is not the origin of Christianity..Jesus did not want to redeem anyone. He wanted to show how to live. His legacy was his bearing and behavior. He did not resist evildoers. He loved evildoers. Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practised was not a proper representation of Jesus’ teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did, in particular his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians had constantly done the opposite of."

Human, All Too Human: On Becoming

JOHN: Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this. SHERLOCK (not looking round): Hmm? JOHN: Being back. Being a hero again. SHERLOCK: Oh, don’t be stupid. JOHN: You’d have to be an idiot not to see it. You love it. SHERLOCK (turning to face him): Love what? JOHN: Being Sherlock Holmes. SHERLOCK: I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.

"Nietzsche wrote that Heraclitus "will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction”. Nietzsche developed the vision of a chaotic world in perpetual change and becoming. The state of becoming does not produce fixed entities, such as being, subject, object, substance, thing. Ephesus, who in the sixth century BC, said that nothing in this world is constant except change and becoming." Sherlock, at this point, is still in a state of becoming.

 "Reptile!"  

"But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a parasite ascend with you!                                                                                    A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth to fatten on your infirm and sore places.                                                                      And this is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its loathsome nest.”

“Enemy” shall ye say but not “villain,” “invalid” shall ye say but not “wretch,” “fool” shall ye say but not “sinner.”

And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in thought, then would every one cry: “Away with the nastiness and the virulent reptile!” Thus Spake Zarathustra

 Why  All The Pain? The Birth of Tragedy

“Artistic creation depends on a tension between two opposing forces, which Nietzsche terms the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian.”

"Apollo was the god of light, reason, harmony, balance and prophesy, while Dionysus was the god of wine, revelry, ecstatic emotion and tragedy.

Nietzsche uses this duality for discussing the artistic process which relate to either Apollo or Dionysus.   Apollo and Dionysus symbols of this duality which he further distinguishes with the terms of “dreams” and “drunkenness.”  For Nietzsche, dreams represent the realm of beautiful forms and symbols, an orderly place of light and reason. Drunkenness, on the other hand, is that state of wild passions where the boundaries between "self" and "other" dissolve.  (This may strike as odd, but Nietzsche seems to make the assumption that, when dreaming, one is aware of the fact that one is dreaming and so still able to separate appearance from reality.  I believe that he would claim those who are entirely caught up in their dreams are experiencing Dionysian ecstasy, not Apollonian beauty.)"

                                        Meet Nihilism

”The nihilist believes in nothing, has no loyalties and has no purpose in life. Some are left with only an impulse to destroy.“

EURUS: Am I being punished? MAN (offscreen, faintly): You’ve been bad. EURUS (almost sing-song): There’s no such thing as ‘bad.’ MAN (offscreen): What about good? EURUS: Good and bad are fairytales. We have evolved to attach an emotional significance to what is nothing more than the survival strategy of the pack animal. We are conditioned to invest divinity in utility. Good isn’t really good, evil isn’t really wrong, and bottoms aren’t really pretty. You are a prisoner of your own meat. MAN (offscreen): Why aren’t you? EURUS (raising her head and looking directly into the camera as she speaks the words slowly and clearly): I’m too clever.

"Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that morality does not exist as something inherent to objective reality; therefore no action is necessarily preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value."

Eurus is most definitely a Sherlock mirror; a Bi-Part Soul. She doesn’t even know 'if something’s beautiful or not; only right’. Eurus is pure Nihilism. A Brain without a heart; an actual calculating machine, attempting to show that making a supposed 'morally-right decision can actually create the opposite result, so that moral codes don’t matter. She used tests, like sherlocks-paradox, tests he has been put through before. As we witness, Sherlock succeeds.

This is still the same journey many have pointed out, just using the Nietzschean Method to do so. Growing from a great man…a Superman into a good one; flawed and very much human, with a Moral Code to match.

"Friedrich Nietzsche believed that the corrosive effects of nihilism would end up destroying all moral constructs, religions, and metaphysical convictions...that nihilism would be the most corrosive force in history.”

Fun Note: On Mustaches & Military Kinks

“Nietzsche lived with the mustache most of his adult life, and it represented for him the military life. He served briefly in the military, and always held certain admiration for military discipline. In him we get a sense that the military attitude is very important towards living a proper, fulfilling life. If you ask most people what does Nietzsche look like, what they will immediately say is: ‘oh that’s the guy with the huge mustache’. And if you ask: ‘well, what about the eyes? the nose? what about the chin? what about the hair?’ They will probably draw a blank. And Nietzsche himself points out that when you see someone with a big handsome mustache, what they see is: the mustache. It is a mask, it allowed Nietzsche in effect to hide.”

To conclude, through the eyes of Nietzsche, the show is smashing the previous images of Sherlock Holmes, using the Philosopher’s works, in addition to Freud and Josef Breuer, to take him through a journey of self-discovery, and yes, love. Given the strong hints to a troubled childhood and suppression of feelings, the philosophies of these men, together, are employed, just as presented in When Nietzsche Wept. This meta cannot even begin to cover the full scope of Nietzshe’s works or his strong influence on the blueprint of Sherlock Holmes. His presence is found throughout canon; sometimes, in the form of other characters. I will say that Nietzche’s ideas are many, profound and important. Considering his influence on Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes, who has in turn, been so important to 21st century, in many fields, Friedrich Nietzsche should always be held in high regard. Not bad for a guy who in the good old days would have been labelled a Heretic, and burned at the stake. So maybe he’s right; we can be better.

“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite. Ecco Homo

(Don’t you just love some of his book titles?)

Read also the-reptile-in-221b &  sherlock-denying-the-devil

 @brilliantorinsane @simpleanddestructivechemistry @shylockgnomes @possiblyimbiassed @raggedyblue @rinkagaminesstuff @artfulkindoforder @radogost  @asherlockstudy  @fellshish @multivariate-madness @madzither @yorkiepug @loveismyrevolution @consultingidiots @tjlcisthenewsexy

Full text of Thus Spake Zarathustra

 X X X X X X X X X X X

#Napoleon Nietzsche & TFP Meta #Threads #1895 #The Ubermensche #Josef Breuer #Freud #Nietzsche/Sherlock Parallels #Holmesian Iconoclasm #I'm Done!

[joehas]

Q&A with John O´Loughlin.

A BIT ABOUT YOU

Q1 Who are you and what do you do?

I am Joe Haslam and I´m the Executive Director of the Owners Scaleup Program and a Professor at IE Business School in Madrid. At IE, I teach classes on scaling and scaleups to University level students, to MBAs and to Senior Executives.  

I´m also a director a number of companies, mainly scaleups or startups started by serial entrepreneurs. I do a lot of speaking at conferences (now mostly virtual) as well as writing and podcasting.

To quote Peter Drucker “Entrepreneurship is risky mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing” Having spoken to maybe 500 founders in the last ten years, I´ve a fair idea what you should not do to scale a business. I put the emphasis on not making known mistakes so that you give yourself the best chance to figure out what it is you need to do.

Q2.      What is your background?

After graduation from UCC, I went to London to work for Perot Systems as a Consultant. That was a great status job but it was no way to live so I came back to Ireland.

A group of us left consulting to set up a company called Marrakech during the dot com era. We raised over seventy million dollars and grew to over 250 people. This is where my interest in scaling up comes from.

After four years, I moved to Madrid to do an MBA at IE Business School. The first weekend, I met this girl and we are still together. In terms of lifestyle, I think that Madrid and Berlin are the two best cities to live in Europe.

Q3. Favourite business news resource?

CB Insights is a wonderful resource. It tells you, often on one page, who the cool companies are in each sector. My students absolute love this visual storytelling.    

I used to read The Economist every Saturday morning when it arrived on paper but I got out of the habit of doing this when i subscribed online instead. This makes no sense, I know, but habits are powerful.

My news now comes from links I find on Twitter. I think it´s a wonderful resource and it allows me to keep in touch with the news from places i previously lived in. You don´t have to live in Silicon Valley anymore to keep in touch with what is going on there.  

Q4. If I was to ask for a business book recommendation?

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell is a great way to understand the importance of coaching. Coaching is much misunderstood. It´s not about telling someone what to do but to help them to find the answers themselves. Business should be like sport where everyone has a coach.

I think every man should read The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. It has helped me a lot to understand how women feel in certain circumstances. Some men think they are helping but they are doing exactly the wrong thing.

Scaleup books are many. The best is Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil is very Silicon Valley but also very well structured. Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman is a strategy I disagree with but you have to read it anyway. Scaling by Roland Siebelink makes the really important points in a way that you cant miss them. Growth and Scaleup Enablers for SMEs by Veijo Komulainen is deceptively useful.

Q5. Are you listening to any good business podcasts at the moment?

Like a lot of people, I listen to Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway twice a week. I can see why it annoys people but its makes business fun and that is welcome. In contrast the a16z podcasts are much richer in content but you do have to force yourself to listen to the end.

In terms of scaleup resources, we are very well served. There is Scaleup Valley by Mike Dias, Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman, Notion Capital´s “Pain of Scale” and The Scaling Startups Podcast by Ross Sheil.

While listening in the car or walking to work is better than nothing, I also recommend that you group listen. By this I mean to schedule a meeting with the management team. Listen to it together and then discuss immediately.

Q6. What’s your best bit of business advice?

I have got loads of this.

Find out what you are good at and get even better at it. Find out what you are bad at and get other people to do it.

Getting a “No” only means “no” today. Failure is part of the process of growing, so don´t take it personally. If you are shooting for big things then you should expect to fail.

Follow up. I see this all the time. Someone makes an intro, you have a meeting but you move onto another meeting before mining the first one fully.

Vulnerability is a super power. Ask for help. People are mostly good and will help if you are open about asking for it.

Q7. What do you do to wind down/relax?

I run 5km, 5 times a week. I also swim 1,000 meters twice a week. I hate bicycles though so I am not a Mamil.

As you get older, if you don´t do physical exercise then everything falls apart. Also it´s a time to think. And thinking cannot be done in short batches. I can think of many problems where the solution only came after thinking uninterrupted about it for more than half an hour.

Stress is a real issue so i try to have one entire day every week when i have no meetings or deadlines. This takes the pressure off and lets me go into random areas as opposed to the here and now. We have really only four productive hours a day, so I try to block off those and then do other not so intellectual tasks the rest of the time.    

ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS

Q8. Why are you in the news?

I´m never not in the news. It´s part of my job to be in the news! Last week it was Saudi Arabia, the week before India, the week before that South Korea.  

Engaging with people is how you learn. I´m really hard on my students who come to class just to listen. E.M. Forster's quote “How do I know what I think until I see what I say” captures this exactly.  

To quote a friend of mine from a private conversation “clear, strong writing was now a differentiator in the tech industry in the same way design had been in the early 2000s, when Apple schooled everyone on what actually created value.  Tech companies had spent ten years catching up on design, investing in talent and buying up studios—but they didn’t yet correctly value written communication. Internally, to customers, or to the public”

Q9. What is your biggest business challenge at present?

I have never had any expectation of stability so the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is just what it is this year.  There are always challenges, they just have different names.  

It is now more difficult to travel to Madrid for the Owners Scaleup Program, particularly from Latin America. A good Professor can creates an atmosphere in a classroom that is hard to match online. They also miss out on the social part of the program. Eating Cachopo and drinking Mencia in Restaurante Asturiano Carlos Tartiere is an important part of the Program.

I used to travel 20 weeks a year to promote IE Business School so that doesnt happen either anymore. Nothing beats going to a country to get to know something about the people in your classroom. In February, I did a six city tour of Mexico (Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mérida, León, Querétaro, CDMX). I haven´t left Spain since.    

Q10. What are you doing to address this?

We have moved online. But not online just in the sense of recording a video but my classes are now live. Death by Powerpoint is now gone as everyone is much more comfortable contributing from their happy place. On video, everyone is equal.  

I was also very lucky in that three years ago, I agreed to shoot something called a High Impact Online Program (HiOP) which is series of short videos and readings which is more like a Netflix series than a class. We .. ahem ... scaled up the course on Scaleup.

IE invested a lot of money in a production team to create this, especially as everything was new so we didn´t really know what we were doing. I am also using something called the WOW Room a lot more for classes. This has 48 screens shaped in the form of a “U” and with up to 200 degree vision. The reality now is that Professors are turning into TV Presenters.  

Q11. In terms of your scaling journey, why have you picked the UK?

In most countries in the world where I visit, the term scaleup is unknown. The exception is the UK where because of the work of the ScaleUp Institute, I´m usually not starting at zero.    

Going back to about 2014, a series of reports were done by organisations such as Deloitte and PWC as well as institutions such as the LSE highlighting the importance of SMEs to the UK economy and what could be done to scale them up.

While the situation since then has not got noticeably better, the UK has managed to put  place a lot more of what SMEs need to scaleup than other countries have. As an example the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) and the Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR).

Q12. Where are the biggest opportunities in your sector over the next 3 years?

If there is a case for Brexit at all it is based on the idea that convergence and cooperation has dampened animal spirits of UK Entrepreneurs. Now that Brexit has happened, there is an element that average is over and that it´s get big or die.

One student of mine compares it to Russia's Shock Therapy is the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR. It is likely that some people who have always had the ambition and the capability will use Brexit as the trigger to make aggressive bets and to double down on a new business model to catch an exponential wave.

While this is easier said than done, I think every SME needs to take a hard look at itself and redefine challenges as opportunities to grow.  There is help out there and people who want to see you succeed.

Joe Haslam 1 December 2020

[constellations-soc]

Blog update and old notes on agency

Just a quick update to let readers know that unfortunately my post queue is near depleted. Main focus for my work on the Welfare Conditionality project is currently getting the analysis and writing done for our final findings papers - so not been reading many new journal articles of recent. Then my own time that I’d normally use for reading and the blog is being spent job hunting. As a result I am also getting short on quotes from texts I have been reading never mind text posts.

Once both of those tasks are out the way, expect a couple of short posts on Wacquant’s writings on actually existing neoliberalism and Bourdieu’s concept of the bureaucratic state field. Using both in an article I am writing with colleagues exploring the experiences of the jobseekers sample in the Welfare Conditionality project, so I will be writing up my theory notes and other thoughts that don’t make it into the article for the main Constellations.scot blog.

Also, in preparation for drafting longer posts for the main Constellations.scot blog based on topics I have covered here in the past I have been collating old notes and posts on various topics. As part of this I am planning 2-3 posts summarising my previous thoughts on the agency / structure debate. While searching for related notes, I stumbled across this assortment of snippets from old posts. So here’s a sneak peak at some of things you can expect to be covered at some point in the future:

I think sociological approaches to history, science and the self aid in building confidence in the discipline.  With sociologists I have come across who have a sense that theory is ‘not for them’ it is normally to do with issues these areas cover.  For example, the abdication of historical change in a lot of sociology has created a situation where ‘transformation’ as opposed to ‘reproduction’ has become an issue for many.  Collins has argued the use of agency has been used in order to try and fill this void.  Where change happens in ‘everyday’ settings it is ascribed to individual agency and where it happens on a larger-scale it is attributed to class agency.  This can be seen in Giddens where his use of structure takes on a highly static feel and change is located within the individual’s capacity ‘to do other’.  Doing so he finds solution in a theorisation that is difficult to apply to empirical analysis - how exactly do you define situations where other happens?  And why is it change is always assumed as arising from an individual choice as opposed to how differentials in power relations creates change? This problem can be seen in the interpretation of Bourdieu as ‘determinist’ and concerned with ‘reproduction’ as opposed to change.  What is left out in this reading is that Bourdieu focuses on ‘reproduction strategies’ that have no guarantee in succeeding and result in change from the struggle to maximise capital.  Education being a place where economic capital can be transformed into cultural capital arises with the downward trend of the passing of the family business down the generations where qualifications becomes a means to enter the new managerial positions.  Here it is also seen that Bourdieu is not strictly ‘cultural sociology’ as it is the changing economic relations and growing division between ownership and management of business leading to value being placed on cultural capital.  Mike Savage in the UK has done a lot of work on this showing how the ‘reproduction’ of class division has been through these attempts by middle-class shop owners to enable their children to enter the managerial class.  Ensuring children maximize their cultural capital also resulted in the rise of elite bordering schools where the resultant habitus of their children can be at odds with their parents in terms of a business mentality. ‘Reproduction’ and ‘transformation’ when approached this way are not the polar opposites they are assumed to be. Weber’s own approach to situations where ‘other’ could have happened remained more for it’s counter-factual value as opposed to a metaphysical distinction of freedom and determination.  In every case where ‘other’ could have happened what is crucial for developing analysis is that it did not and this forms a place to focus understanding and explanation.  Boltanski in The Spirit of Capitalism adopts this approach for examining how the left’s critique of capitalism was appropriated into capitalism itself.  This change in its organisation has thus ensured its continued existence rather than leading to socialism.  Turning towards both history and sociology of the self offers a way in which these issues can be grasped as concerns of research and not purely ‘theoretical’ that makes so many feel as if ‘it is not for the likes of me’. [Elias in the] The Civilizing Process in using etiquette manuals to tract changes within habitus over time to tie this into state-formation in the second half brilliantly shows how issues of change and self can be turned into research projects.  It was the side notes he made during this that formed the first chapter of The Society of Individuals.  This remains a vital work not only in it’s dismantling of a dichotomy of individuals and society as if talking of two separate objects ‘like pots and pans’.  It also treats conceptual problems of sociology as ones that can be put to research.  Through questioning how it is that a person can come to experience themselves as a self-enclosed individual totally separate from society ‘out there’ Elias is able to both explain how this distinction came about and why it holds such a lingering power over academic thought.  In doing so also incorporating issues tending to be treated philosophically as ‘epistemological’ as instead objects for research.

[thelondonfilmschool]

“Students are the purest fuel for the film industry and it’s great to be around them” - Heads of Screenwriting, Sophia Wellington & Jonathan Hourigan

Sophia Wellington and Jonathan Hourigan have been popular tutors for many years at London Film School (LFS), so it was no surprise when they were chosen to fill Brian Dunnigan’s considerable shoes when he left this year after 12 years as Head of Screenwriting. We chatted to them about their new shared role, what they love about LFS and how they’re continuing its legacy.

S.M: Could you tell us a little bit about your background before working at London Film School?

Sophia Wellington: I got into film, I think like a lot of people, by accident. I had a temporary job at the BBC, at Television Film Studios, Ealing (TFS) and then whilst I was there I started to follow the camera crew around and went every weekend for about four weeks, going on set and just talking to them. And then, from doing that, I got onto a course at the BBC where I trained in technical production and on studio cameras. I then became a camera assistant on film cameras and then in the cutting room. My training was mainly technical and, as I say, by accident, but that’s how I started. Then, when Avid became very popular, I made that switch to development and worked in development and production as a freelancer, working with writers. And the rest is history!

S.M: You’d taught before, in Singapore?

S.W: I did, but actually the first place that I taught was at the LFS. Like a lot of people in the industry, I thought that once you get to a certain level in your work it’s really important to try and give back. So, I was a mentor here in 2004 and then started as a feature development tutor, around 2005-6. I did that for a year or so and then went to Singapore and taught full time. New York University has a film school in Singapore, Tisch Asia, and I taught there for eight years. It’s a long time to be away from the UK industry, but it was really useful to be in Asia. The training that I got in Singapore made me aware of the different film industries, but also how universal stories can be and should be, and how to approach them and ways of storytelling. When I left Singapore, I came back to work at LFS.

Jonathan Hourigan: I was interested in photography when I was a teenager, my uncle was a photographer and taught photography at West Sussex College of Art and Design. I remember going to a screening there one afternoon and I saw The Spirit of the Beehive, projected on a scratchy 16mm print, literally onto a white sheet stretched onto a wall. And that was the moment I vividly remember thinking, “Oh, that looks like an interesting thing to do, I don’t want to take photographs, I want to do something about making movies.” Then I went to university and did an academic degree, and was interested in the cinema but didn’t really know how to get going. I got very interested in a French director called Bresson and I got in contact with him and showed all his films in London, as you couldn’t see them otherwise, and it just happened that as I was finishing university he was making a film. So, I went and worked with him in Paris for a year, and I came back and thought, “Well, I’m not very enterprising and I know that about myself, so I’ve got to go to film school.” I’ve got very clear views on why you should come to film school, and having come back to the UK after working with Bresson in France it took me a few years to get around to making a film to get me into the National Film School. I went there for several years, then left the National where I studied direction, tried to set things up and I just found I started to get work script reading and got more and more interested in writing. So, I started to write, and do some teaching around that and in fact, Sophia introduced me here at LFS. I was a mentor at some point around 2003-4, just before she went away (to Singapore) and I think I probably inherited her feature development group. I took an opportunity that was too good to say no to, which was to replace Sophia! And the rest is history. I teach here, a little bit elsewhere, and carry on writing as well.

S.M: This is the first year that you’ve both taken over from Brian Dunnigan, who’d headed the MA Screenwriting program for 12 years. Why did you decide to share the role? 

J.H: We’ve both worked here for a number of years and feel very loyal to the place. We’re very interested in the way the school works – there aren’t many conservatoire film schools left. We worked with Brian but also with a very good group of other visiting lecturers, and we felt there was something really powerful about that group. When the opportunity came up because Brian was leaving, and the school was looking for a new head of screenwriting, we thought it would be a great opportunity to step up and do something different, slightly change our focus. Job sharing allows us both to share the challenges of doing this job which is great, but also to carry on doing other things so that we’re out in the industry as well.

S.W: I completely agree. I think that from our time here, at the school, we’ve got a commitment to it. We think it works really well, and we’ve got a great core of tutors. And so, when Brian left, there was the risk of somebody new coming in and changing it, or whether we could step up and protect what we have and continue it. And so, I think that for both of us that was a big part of it – trying to continue this great legacy and this great team, and make it as good as it could be. The job share, I think, is really important because this is such an industry facing course, and it allows us to keep links with the industry and with outsiders. There’s a lot of work to do here, and being full time it’s possible just to focus very much on the teaching and the students, which is important, but at the end of the year they do have to go out into the industry. Our connection with the industry allows us to be mindful of that at all times – that not only are we teaching students to be as good writers as they can be, but in a year’s time they’ve got to go out into the industry. We have to make them aware of and prepare them for it, and this job share offers, I think, the best opportunity to do that.

S.M: Has it been a case of taking the baton from Brian and carrying on more or less the same, or are changes afoot?

J.H: As we said, we’ve always felt there’s something very special about the structure of the course and about this school, and so you want to preserve a lot of what’s going on. But we’ve changed a number of things. We’ve got some new tutors involved, because we’re not now doing so much of the frontline teaching ourselves. We do the Work and Research Journal in a slightly different way than has been the case in the past, although funnily enough in a way that’s an evolution that’s in keeping with the rest of what we’re doing. We’re now doing the journal in group sessions, which of course replicates the very powerful feature development group model, and it seems to be working well. It’s a change but it’s in keeping with what’s been going on. But there haven’t been any major ruptures with the past.

S.W: I don’t think there needed to be. The way that the course was run was excellent and incredibly strong. With the two of us, it now means that there’s a little bit of fresh energy, because I would say that we are aware of different challenges facing the course and the industry. So, we have to be mindful about how we’re going to deal with those. One of the challenges that we’re dealing with is, of course, the popularity of writing for mediums outside of the big screen – for television and other areas. And whereas our focus is very specifically on writing a feature script, we’ve also got to see how we can address a changing industry and make sure that our writers have the skills that can transfer into these other areas, while still ensuring that we have given them the best teaching possible. So, while there are no major changes, we are very aware of new challenges and spending a lot of time thinking, “How can we tweak areas here and there to make sure we can face these challenges?”

S.M: Having both worked and studied in a variety of different film school environments around the world, what do you think is special about London Film School?

J.H: In terms of the school, the non-specialisation is really powerful, having graduated from the National myself where you specialise right from the beginning, I think it’s a really interesting comparison. You see people who embrace it and make a strong decision to come here because they really want to experience that whole range of roles involved in making a film. On this course in particular, I think the thing that’s impressive is how collaborative people are. Students are developing their own ideas, about which they are passionate, but there’s a very powerful sense of collective purpose and that they can all flourish equally and so therefore there’s real benefit in supporting one another. Not in a complacent way, because support is often by giving robust challenges, but I think that’s really powerful, that sense of collective identity. They make very different work, but there’s a real sense that they’re a group. They stick together and help one another. It’s impressive.

S.W: Just to go off that, of course, it’s a one-year course. All the other courses I’ve been on have been over two years, so this is incredibly intense and much tighter, by virtue of being one year. We do encourage a lot of that learning and development to come from fellow students, not just from the tutors. Compared to the other film schools I’ve been at, which worked incredibly well for what they did, I think that the way that this course is organised and how we work within small groups and the really great student to teacher ratio allows everybody to be incredibly supportive of each other. It forces a strong community during the year that they are studying here, and it also creates a very creative environment where they are getting feedback, not just from tutors, but from each other. They understand that that’s what they’re supposed to do. So, I think that’s one of the real strengths for writing here. Writing is such a solitary profession, I think it’s fantastic that they start their learning in understanding that, actually, it can be more collaborative. You can get support from others. This is a different way of doing it, it’s not just about locking yourself in a dark room and writing, it’s actually about being supported by other people. That’s a very strong ethos of the school and one of the things that makes it unique.

S.M: How does the school prepare people for life after film school?

J.H: You’ve got to prepare people for moving out and working independently, and it’s a real challenge. We send them out, hopefully, with the capacity to generate good ideas, a lot of powerful transferrable skills as writers, a set of relationships with other writers, the people who teach them and the filmmakers up the road. And, of course, the film industry in London, so a world of agents, producers, other writers who hopefully come through the school and who they meet on their journey through here. The thing that’s impressive in comparison with when I was at film school is that students also come with a lot more enterprise. We don’t have to work that hard to talk to them about preparing for life after film school. I was talking to some of the current cohort, who are only four weeks in, and they’re already thinking about that. They’re more and more proactive and thinking about how they’re going to make themselves employable, without compromising the educational and creative work that they’re doing here. I think that’s impressive.

S.W: It’s always a challenge, preparing students for the industry, and we can talk about the schedule that we have here, the industry guests that we bring in and the fact that all of the tutors are visiting lecturers who work in the industry. So, every bit of their teaching is informed with their industry experience. The students are surrounded by, and their teaching is done by, industry people. For all film schools, leaving is challenging. It’s like being kicked out of the nest, but we provide them with the tools and the skills to get out there and to fly! The other challenge is always to provide them with the confidence to believe that they have those skills.

J.H: We’ve just done a big piece of work on tracking graduates over the last four or five years, and you see a number of trends. A lot of graduates leave, and they probably do other work and build up a portfolio of films, working with filmmakers up the road. Ben Cleary’s is an example of somebody who went out, made a short film and won an Oscar. Alejandro Stepenberg from a couple of years ago I think has about seven or eight graduation film credits, people he’s kept in contact with and is travelling the world, making short films with people. Other people have found themselves doing script editing, we’ve got students from three or four years ago who have got show running jobs in children’s animation series … A whole different range of ways that people find their ways into employment, which reflect their creative preferences, their personalities, their desire to be in a job or working freelance. I think we send them out with the creative and technical capacities, and then they generate and we nurture that sense of enterprise that means most of them find work within the industry. They then have to negotiate where that goes longer term. 

S.W: I think that point about having the film students over the road and the ability to work on graduation films is really important, because it’s a step into the industry. That allows them to stay connected for some time. It’s like a lovely transition period where they can work on student films at a high level while still being slightly supported. As I say, because we’ve only got one year, we think our relationship with our grads and our alumni is really important, and how they can support each other. That’s something that we are looking to improve, because so much of supporting people into the industry is the alumni who have gone before. They’re the ones that can help give them a softer landing and a leg up!

S.M: A big part of your job is student enrolment. What kind of things are you looking for in potential students?

S.W: In the interview, I’m looking for somebody who wants to engage with telling stories. Somebody who has some sort of visual sense, somebody who’s interested in people and also has something to say. Someone who has a passion for film and connects to it in an emotional way, rather than just an intellectual way. There’s not one type of student we’re looking for - one of the great things about this course is that it’s incredibly diverse and we have very different people. I think definitely a passion for film and stories, and a desire to play with them. That is something that I always stress in interviews, that they’re open to feedback and ideas and coming up with ideas and sparking conversation. Because, that’s so much about how we teach here – we’re teaching in small groups, so it’s about what they’re giving to that group and what they get back. Anyone with those types of qualities is definitely what we’re looking for here.

J.H: I’d say the same. For me, at interview and once they’re here, it’s about this balance between core point of view, where you feel there’s something about them and that they’re interested in the world, and then around that, in orbit, is that flexibility that Sophia’s talking about. That willingness to balance that sense of real purpose with a willingness to explore the different ways in which you might develop it.

S.M: Once someone’s been accepted onto the course, what advice would you give them to best prepare for their year here?

J.H: What I wouldn’t do is sit and read a load of screenwriting manuals, but I would try and watch a lot of films. Hopefully anyone applying would already be watching a lot of films, but it’d be great if they went and read a bunch of screenplays, that’s also very useful. And of course, keep writing. Keep writing as part of a process. Don’t think you’re getting ahead of the game and nailing your first term’s work – just immerse yourself in a world in which writing becomes a daily practice, which is one of the key parts of the course, to be doing it all the time. 

S.W: I would encourage anybody who’s gone through the interview and been given a place to continue that sense of wonder and interest and appetite. I would also stress that coming onto the course is not a time for them to then have to give up any creative thinking, thinking that we will provide lots of answers. Not at all. You really have to come here with an appetite to explore for yourself, and to question and wonder about things. So, you should never think of the interview as, “Phew, I’ve passed that, everything’s fine!” Rather, that work of questioning ideas, what you’re interested in and questioning yourself should continue after the interview and throughout the course. It’s about creating that writing practice. You learn how to write through the practice of writing, and we don’t create perfect writers at the end of the course but rather those who know how to develop and to grow.

S.M: What inspiration do you take from being around students?

S.W: What is great about students is that they think anything is possible. They think that the industry can be changed and that it’s an important place where you can change the world and present incredibly powerful messages and themes and make important stories. When you work in the industry for a long time it can often feel like it’s about money and the economics and everything else, so students give you a moment to breathe fresh air and think, actually, this is what the industry is. It’s a place for art, for exploring ideas and universal questions. Students are the purest fuel for the industry and it’s great to be around them because they have those fresh ideas and that passion that we need.

J.H: Being around students makes me realise how important and worthwhile it is to teach. And you’re right, they do come with enormous energy and enthusiasm, determined to break down the walls. It’s exciting to be part of that and to help focus it.

S.M: It does seem to be part of the industry, that people get to a point where they want to give something back in terms of sharing knowledge.

S.W: Yes, whether it’s a little bit of mentoring or full-time teaching, I think that is definitely built into it. Even within the formal structure of film schools there’s always somebody who is more of a mentor who really is inspiring. I think we all have mentors, within film schools and also within the industry, who have done an awful lot to help us and shape our own passion for film. It’s a responsibility to pass it on to others, so you’re right, teaching is an opportunity to do that.

S.M: Jonathan, you mentioned before that you went to film school after returning from working with Bresson in Paris because you felt you weren’t very enterprising. There’s an ongoing debate about whether writers and film makers need to go to film school or not – what’s your opinion on that?

J.H: For me it was an incredible experience and I loved going there, and I don’t think I would have found my way into being a filmmaker had I not done it. But you have to make a strong choice and have strong reasons to do it. Screenwriting is a little different. Writing is solitary, and if you’re going to do the equivalent of going and doing your first feature, which is to sit at home and write it, it’s very hard to do that first time. I think that at film school, you’re putting yourself in a community of writers for a year with all the benefits that come from that. There aren’t many people, starting out, who would be more productive in a year sitting at home or sitting in a garret in Paris, even, than they would be coming here. I think you learn a lot and you’re encouraged to be very productive.

S.W: I think it’s something that you should think about seriously. Going to a film school is only the start of getting yourself into the film industry. You have to think long and hard about what you want to get out of it and what you expect to do with it afterwards. It immediately puts you into a creative environment that will sustain and inspire you and allow you to continue being creative during the following years. If you don’t have that it’s very easy to slip out of the industry. It also gives you, very quickly, the tools and the skills you need to problem solve when you’re dealing with either filmmaking issues or story issues. You’re given this information upfront in very clear ways. Also, within a film school environment you’re encouraged to work on areas where you are weak, in a way that you might not when you’re working on your own. The other thing I will say about film school, as much as I loved my training at the BBC, film schools are one of the last places where you are allowed to dream and break rules and think as an artist. And you do not get that within industry training. Film schools are the only place, I think, where you are given the time, and the freedom, and the support to do that. That’s where artists come from, and what film schools support.

#screenwriting #filmmaking #bresson #script editing #script reading #bbc #tisch #ealing studios #16mm #West Sussex College of Art and Design #ben cleary #alejandro stepenberg #filmschool #teaching #filmindustry

[qalandiyainternational]

Open Call:Participation in 

Qalandiya International

Deadline: 15 November 2017

Qalandiya International invites organisations working in contemporary art practices to submit project proposals for participation in the Qi2018 program under the theme of ‘solidarity.’ Qi2018 will take place October 2018 (final dates to be confirmed)

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Qalandiya International (Qi) was founded in 2012 as a joint contemporary art event that takes place every two years across Palestinian cities and villages. Qi aims to place Palestine on the world’s cultural map by producing a series of exhibitions, as well as performances, talks, film screenings, workshops and tours, that open up channels for dialogue and exchange, both locally and internationally. As a partnership between different art and cultural organisations, Qi works collectively to join forces to unify a fragmented geography.

Qi began with a partnership of 4 Palestinian organisations (Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, RIWAQ Center for Architectural Conservation, the A.M. Qattan Foundation, and Al Hoash-Palestinian Art Court). The first edition in 2012 was organised by 7 partners, in 2014 there were 14, and in 2016 16 partners produced visual art exhibitions and events in Haifa, Gaza, Jerusalem, Ramallah & Al Bireh, Amman, Bethlehem, Beirut and London.

Qi is collaborative and horizontal in structure. Decisions are made around a round table, with all partner organisations having an equal voice. The theme, timing, opening and closing events, and media and publicity are jointly agreed upon through monthly meetings and online interactions. In 2016, curatorial and media committees were introduced to ensure the effective integration of all activities and the quality of the events. All committees are on a voluntary basis and are open to all partners.  

Qi2018 Theme:

The Social Question

The notion of ‘solidarity’ has been synchronic with the history of the Palestinian struggle against successive colonial structures and regimes, although not always in perfect tandem with it. The ethos and practices of ‘solidarity’ have been through a plethora of delineations, spanning local particularities and/or global networks and alliances. The spectrum of the contradictory practices of ‘solidarity’ has ranged from being closely affiliated at certain times to extreme religious ideals and idioms, towards more global socialist manifestoes during specific epochs, while also being unremittingly hinged upon Pan-Arab idealism. These were not, however, the only practices of ‘solidarity’ in Palestine. Historically, other forms have fluctuated and come and gone, based on either ideologies, cultural and humanitarian idioms, or social and tribal rapports, etc.  

In Palestine, the term ‘solidarity’ has been, and still is, a buzzword in the struggle for liberation from consecutive colonial administrations. Its forms and ideological stances have morphed over time and geography, rising and sinking with the tides of change in the form of the struggle for freedom. Now, it is social issues that are coming to the fore in a moment of external and internal political and societal struggles. Forced deterioration has led us to a moment of ambiguity, where uncertainty becomes the standard, and where managing, and mismanaging, the decline of the State is a recognised lifestyle. Overlapping hegemonies of religion and neoliberal culture are redefining the collective social and political stance, and the transmutation of individual and societal ethics, whereby acceptance becomes one of the most dismaying political consequences of capitalism. ‘The Social Question’ becomes a disputation of the term ‘solidarity’, in order to contemplate possibilities of departure out of this stagnant state.

The notion of the shared thoughts, values and objectives that bind us is stirred to re-energise and re-investigate meanings of solidarity and collectivism – values that have allowed Palestinian society to resist and stay alive for decades. While keeping the ‘Social Question’ as a beacon, solidarity can be considered and looked at through different lenses.

Qalandiya International invites partners and collaborators to probe ‘The Social Question’ by means of discursive engagement with the term ‘Solidarity’ – pertaining to opening up for global experiences, yet forging local experimentations and contemporary definitions. Ideas of mutuality, the conventional things that connect us all, are questioned in order to reactivate this space of solidarity and the collective spirit that has, for decades, allowed the Palestinian community to resist and survive. Solidarity can be seen through a series of lenses that are all constructed initially with a common ground, The Social Question, which may help with some answers to the question: who do we want to be as a society?

Application Guidelines:

Who can apply? Qi is open to considering proposals by institutions and collectives that comply with the following: - Applicants must engage with contemporary art practices as part of their core activity. - Proposals are welcome from individual organisations, partnerships/collaborations between different organisations or art collectives/groups. - Both Palestinian and international applicants are welcome to apply. - Individual artists cannot apply; however, they can participate through open calls held by partner organisations.   - Successful applicants must be able to make a payment of $5,000 as a contribution towards the organisational costs of Qi2018.

Program Proposals: - Projects can be realised through various contemporary art practices and can be in different visual art forms and media. - The proposal should clarify how the project will be developed and implemented from concept to exhibition, with a particular focus on engaging the public and community through the process. We ask all applicants to take into consideration a 3-phase process for deeper study and research, to result in quality production and public engagement. There are no restrictions on the duration and length of each phase, applicants are free to overlap, integrate and elongate the phases as they find suitable for their program proposal. The plan should address the following phases: 1) Research: explain the process and outcome of researching the concept for developing the proposed program; i.e. site visits, inviting artists/collectives, writing texts, roundtable discussions, etc. We strongly recommend applicants think of ways to share the outcome of the research with the public and Qi partners, whether in the forms of texts, publications, blogs, etc. 2) Engagement: an engagement plan that accompanies the project and which opens the space for communities to engage with the research, to respond and actively participate in the conceptual framework of the program. This can be exercised through experimental practices, organising public talks, screenings programs, etc. 3) Presentation/exhibition: final realisation of the project can be presented through diverse programs, and could take various forms and structures: exhibitions, public engagements, interventions, seminars, etc. Potential partners are encouraged to produce and present new works of contemporary art practices at a high level of quality. Applicants are strongly encouraged to provide opportunities for individual artists and collectives to participate in their program through open calls and other platforms.

Qi Conditions: By submitting your proposal, the applicant understands and agrees to the following: - Successful future partners must contribute $5,000 to the collective budget that supports the preparation and production of Qalandiya International, once a contract is signed by end of January 2018. - Future partners must attend and contribute to Qi preparation meetings, with at least one representative in the steering committee (possibly via skype) and supporting staff contributing in other areas such as media and communications, curatorial, outreach and fundraising, both on the local and international level. - Applicants must be directly responsible for the preparation, research and implementation of their own projects, including securing funds, locations and resources. - Applicants will be expected to submit all program materials, curatorial statements and supporting materials in both English and Arabic, edited and proofread on time. Qi will not be responsible for editing individual applicant’s programs. - All promotional material and publications of the individual partner projects should/will include the Qi logo and any other agreed-upon joint visibility items.

How to apply? Application Process - Complete the application form in either English or Arabic - Applications will be accepted until 15 November 2017. No applications will be considered following this date under any circumstance.

Evaluation and Selection Process Two separate committees will evaluate the proposals. An Administrative Committee will consider the eligibility of the applicants and their adherence to Qi’s conditions and working structure. The Curatorial Committee will review proposals and evaluate them, based on the relevance and understanding of the curatorial concept, the plans for the development and implementation of the project, the quality and professionalism of the work, as well as the capabilities of meeting the schedule plans. Applicants may be requested to meet with the committees for questions and clarifications.  

Announcement Selected proposals will be announced on 15 December 2017. Following this date, applicants will be notified of upcoming meetings and action plan.

Qi Funding

For every edition of Qi, each of the partner organisations builds its own program in synergy with the other partners, taking into consideration the theme and the schedule of events. Each of the partner organisations fundraises for and finances its program(s) individually. However, there are joint activities that are covered collectively and equally by all partners. The opening and closing events, media and publicity, human resources and certain logistics, as well as a portion of the ‘Encounters’ (the accompanying discussions program), are jointly financed by the contributions of the partners as well as overall sponsors. Qi only approaches Palestinian sponsors and supporters for its joint activities.

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For further information please contact us via [email protected]

www.qalandiyainternational.org

[ericfruits]

A strange disease has taken hold of British politics

BRITAIN is suffering from a very un-British affliction at the moment: millenarianism. A country that has always prided itself on its support for common sense and gradual change is being hijacked by people who believe that the end is nigh and the kingdom of God is upon us.  

I was reminded of the Labour Party’s millenarian streak when, on arriving in Manchester for the Conservative Party conference, I got into a debate with a bearded gentleman selling Socialist Worker, a leftie newspaper. The bearded gentleman informed me that “the Russian Revolution was the greatest event in the history of the world”. I asked him if he had ever been to Russia. He said that he hadn’t—an odd admission in an age of cheap travel for somebody who thought that it was the greatest thing ever. Yet he was singularly unimpressed by my claim that, having been there several times, including in the 1980s, the country didn’t look like the product of the greatest event ever. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was incapable of seeing what was really going on because I was a lackey of the capitalist class. The conversation went downhill from there. 

This gentleman might be an extreme example of the breed but last week’s Labour conference in Brighton was full of people with a similarly millenarian mind-set. Jeremy Corbyn and his acolytes kept repeating that Britain was essentially a land of milk and honey—the fifth richest country in the world no less—and the only reason people didn’t have enough of the good things in life was that “the rich” were consuming more than their fair share. All you needed to do was to tax the rich a bit more and share the wealth more fairly and Britain’s worst problems (homelessness, poverty, NHS queues) would disappear in a puff of smoke. 

Many Corbynistas linked redistributionism to a strange socialist Promethianism. The “World Transformed”—a parallel conference linked to Momentum, Labour’s grassroots organisation—was dedicated to the proposition that ordinary people are fonts of creativity. Society stifles their talent with its oppressive structures and tedious demands. Give people a “creative space” and a latte, however, and they will start weaving quilts, writing poems, composing rap songs and otherwise adding to the store of human civilisation. Many World Transformers believe that the greatest work of art of all is social change: they want people to devote their lives to a perpetual process of political agitation, not just because they want to change the world but because they think that activism is in itself liberating. The movement and the millennium are one. 

The Tory party is naturally better protected from the spirit of millenarianism than Labour: Toryism is surely a philosophy based on the notion of the imperfectability of man, the necessity of messy compromises and the danger of fanaticism. But the spirit of millenarianism is so strong in Britain at the moment that it is corrupting even Toryism. 

The millenarian spirit was on full display at the Conservative Party conference. For the most part Conference events were lightly attended. An (admittedly early) breakfast event featuring Damian Green, the deputy prime minister, was three-quarters empty. A set-piece speech by Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have been part empty if it weren’t for the army of PR people and corporate clones. Many speakers at fringe events found themselves singing to a tiny band of fellow-obsessives. 

But throw the betrayal of Brexit into the mix and the events were full beyond bursting point. An event by the Eurosceptic Bruges Group attracted 800 people. A discussion of “the threat to Brexit” had to turn away hundreds of angry Brexiteers (the organisers invented the excuse that people wouldn’t be admitted without a ticket despite the fact that no tickets had been issued). A third discussion on “how to leave the EU” was equally over-subscribed. 

The biggest star of the show was Jacob Rees-Mogg, a young fogey who wears double-breasted suits and a pocket watch and who had been written off, until recently, as a harmless eccentric. Mr Rees-Mogg, a protégé of Sir Bill Cash, the grand old man of Euroscepticism, delivers fluent discourses on the evils of the EU and the importance of recovering Britain’s sovereignty. The audience goes absolutely wild—partly because of the clarity of his views and partly, I suspect, because he represents a visible link with an older world before Britain was corrupted by the manifold evils of modernity.

Another star of the right is Daniel Hannan, a Member of European Parliament and founder of the Institute of Free Trade, which Boris Johnson launched in the Foreign Office on September 27th. Mr Hannan is as fluent as Mr Rees-Mogg and more wide-ranging: he argues that free trade is the world’s greatest engine of prosperity. Forget about politicians and bureaucrats: they are for the most part the people who spend the surplus generated by free exchange. What drives society forward are the myriad private transactions that take place, as it were, “in the cloud”. 

Mr Hannan’s eloquent support for free trade is welcome in a world that is in danger of surrendering to protectionism. Mr Rees-Mogg makes some telling points about the European Union’s democratic deficit. But hanging over everything they say—like Mr Hannan’s “cloud”—is the spirit of millenarianism. And that spirit becomes ever stronger as exposition turns to discussion. The audience applauds every line about not settling bills with the EU. (“We don’t owe the EU a penny,” said one speaker. “They owe us $10 billion.”) It applauds every use of the word “eurocrat”. It goes wild whenever you talk about “uncontrolled immigration”. 

The Brexiteers share Mr Corbyn’s enthusiasm for dividing the world into good and evil: in this case into good Britons and evil European bureaucrats. And it shares Mr Corbyn’s indifference to the practical difficulties of turning blueprints into reality. Brexiteers continue to argue that leaving an economic bloc of which Britain has been part for more than 40 years will be easy. Any difficulties will be the result of knaves who wish us ill or fools who can’t turn a key. Brexiteers refuse to consider the idea that there is a strong free-trade argument for staying in the EU: it is a single market of 500m people with hundreds of trade deals with non-EU countries. And they ignore the fact that striking free-trade deals is an arduous technical process that requires years of hard negotiation and armies of skilled negotiators.  

The Brexiteers at the conference were completely blind to the dangers of their millenarian dreams. They didn’t seem to worry about the fact that, only a few days ago, America had announced a trade action against Bombardier, a Canadian aircraft manufacturer, threatening more than 1,000 jobs in Northern Ireland. Instead, they went on talking blithely about striking free-trade deals with our so-called natural ally. They didn’t worry about Britain crashing out of the EU with no trade deal. Some people almost seemed to welcome the idea—as if Britain would be purified by crisis and would emerge stronger. 

The problem with millenarianism is not just that it is nonsense. It’s not just that it always leads to disappointment. It’s that it leads to accusations of betrayal. Britain is not only condemned to trying to construct Utopias that cannot be built. It is condemned to looking for scapegoats who can explain why the millenarian dream turned out to be a squalid nightmare.  

More from Bagehot at the conferences

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#IFTTT #Feedly

[artech0101-blog]

Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness by Roy Ascott

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California 2003

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From Cybernetics to Telematics  The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott Edward A. Shanken

- Frank Popper - the foremost European historian of art and technology  - Roy Ascott is recognised as “the outstanding artist in the field of telematics” - Telematics integrates computers and telecommunications, enabling such familiar applications as electronic mail (e-mail) and automatic teller machines (ATMs).  - Ascott began developing a more expanded theory of telematics decades ago and has applied it to all aspects of his artwork, writing and teaching. He defined telematics as “computer-mediated communications networking between geographically dispersed individuals and institutions...and between the human mind and artificial systems of intelligence and perception.”  - Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters.  - Synthesising recent advances in science and technology with experimental art and ancient systems of knowledge, Ascott’s visionary theory and practice aspire to enhance human consciousness and to unite minds around the world in a global telematic embrace that is greater than the sum of its parts.  - By the term “visionary”, I mean to suggest a systematic method for envisioning the future. Ascott has described his own work as “visionary”, and the word itself emphasises that his theories emerge from, and focus on, the visual discourses of art.  - While the artist draws on mystical traditions, his work is more closely allied to the technological utopianism of Filippo Marinetti than to the ecstatic religiosity of William Blake. At the same time, the humanism, spirituality, and systematic methods that characterise his practice, teaching, and theorisation of art share affinities with the Bauhaus master Wassily Kandinsky. In the tradition of futurologists like Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, Ascott’s prescience results from applying associative reasoning to the serendipitous conjunction, or network, of insights gained from a widely interdisciplinary professional practice.  - Ascott’s synthetic method for envisioning the future is exemplified both by his independent development of interactive art and by the parallel he subsequently drew between the aesthetic principle of interactivity and the scientific theory of cybernetics.  - His interactive Change Paintings, begun in 1959, joined together divergent discourses in the visual arts, along with philosophical and biological theories of duration and morphology. They featured a variable structure that enabled the composition to be rearranged interactively by viewers, who thereby became an integral part of the work. 

- In 1961, Ascott began studying the science of cybernetics and recognised its congruence with his concepts of interactive art. The artist’s first publication, “The Construction of Change”, reflected an integration of these aesthetic and scientific concerns and proposed radical theories of art and education based on cybernetics. For Ascott and his students, individual artworks - and the classroom alike - came to be seen as creative systems, the behaviour of which could be altered and regulated by the interactive exchange of information via feedback loops.  - By the mid 1960s, Ascott began to consider the cultural implications of telecommunications. In “Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision”, he discussed the possibilities of artistic collaborations between participants in remote locations, interacting via electronic networks. At the same time that the initial formal concerns of conceptual art were being formulated under the rhetoric of “dematerialization”, Ascott was considering how the ethereal medium of electronic telecommunications could facilitate interactive and interdisciplinary exchanges.  - The sort of electronic exchanges that Ascott had envisioned in “Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision” were demonstrated in 1968 by the computer scientist Doug Engelbart’s NLS “oN Line System.” This computer network based at the Stanford Research Laboratory (now SRI) included “the remote participation of multiple people at various sites.”  - In 1969, ARPANET (precursor to the Internet) went into operation, sponsored by the U.S. government, but it remained the exclusive province of the defense and scientific communities for a decade.  - Ascott first went online in 1978, an encounter that turned his attention to organising his first international artists’ computer-conferencing project, “Terminal Art” (1980).  - Ascott’s early experiences of telematics resulted in the theories elaborated in his essays “Network as Artwork: The Future of Visual Arts Education” and “Art and Telematics: Towards a Network Consciousness”. Drawing on diverse sources, in the latter essay, he discussed how his telematic project “La Plissure du Texte” (1983) exemplified Roland Barthes’ theories of nonlinear narrative and intertextuality. Moreover, noting parallels between neural networks in the brain and telematic computer networks, Ascott proposed that global telematic exchange could expand human consciousness.  - He tempered this utopian vision by citing Michel Foucault’s book L’order du discours (1971), which discusses the inextricability of texts and meaning from the institutional powers that they reflect and to which they must capitulate. Consequently, the artist warned that in “the interwoven and shared text of telematics...meaning is negotiated - but it too can be the object of desire...We can expect a growing...interest in telematics on the part of controlling institutions”.  - Science and technology, for Ascott, can contribute to expanding global consciousness, but only with the help of alternative systems of knowledge, such as the I Ching (the sixth-century B.C. Taoist Book of Changes), parapsychology, Hopi and Gnostic cosmologies, and other modes of holistic thought that the artist has recognised as complementary to Western epistemological models.  - In 1982, Ascott’s telematic art project “Ten Wings” produced the first planetary throwing of the I Ching using computer conferencing. More recently, Ascott’s contact with Kuikuru pagés (shamans) and initiation into the Santo Daime community in Brazil resulted in his essay “Weaving the Shamanic Web”. Here the artist’s concept of “technoetics” again acknowledges the complementarity of technological and ritualistic methods for expanding consciousness and creating meaning.  - Ascott’s theories propose personal and social growth through technically mediated, collaborative interaction. They can be interpreted as aesthetic models for reordering cultural values and recreating the world. 

- Throughout the late 20th century, corporations increasingly strategised how to use technology to expand markets and improve earnings, and academic theories of postmodernity became increasingly anti-utopian, multicultural, and cynical. During this time, Ascott remained committed to theorizing how telematic technology could being about a condition of psychical convergence throughout the world. He has cited the French philosopher Charles Fourier’s principle of “passionate attraction” as an important model for his theory of love in the telematic embrace. Passionate attraction constitutes a field that, like gravity, draws together human beings and bonds them. Ascott envisioned that telematic love would extend beyond the attraction of physical bodies. As an example of this dynamic force in telematic systems, in 1984, he described the feeling of “connection and...close community, almost intimacy...quite unlike...face-to-face meetings” that people have reported experiencing online.  - Telematics, the artist believed would expand perception and awareness by merging human and technological forms of intelligence and consciousness through networked communications. He theorised that this global telematic embrace would constitute an “infrastructure for spiritual interchange that could lead to the harmonisation and creative development of the whole planet”. - Joining his long-standing concerns with cybernetics, telematics, and art education, he founded the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA). In 1995, CAiiA became the first online Ph.D. program with an emphasis on interactive art. 

CYBERNETICS

The Hungarian-born artist Nicolas Schöffer created his first cybernetic sculptures CYSP O and CYSP I (the titles of which combine the first two letters of the words “cybernetic” and “spatio-dynamique”) in 1956. 

CYSP 0 

CYSP 1

In 1958, scientist Abraham Moles published Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique, which outlined “the aesthetic conditions for channeling media”. Subsequently, “Cybernetic Serendipity,” an exhibition curated by Jasia Reichardt in London (1968), Washington D.C. (1969), and San Francisco (1969-70) popularized the idea of joining cybernetics with art. 

Art historian David Mellor writes of the cultural attitudes and ideas that cybernetics embodied at that time in Britain. “The wired, electronic outlines of a cybernetic society became apparent to the visual imagination - an immediate future...drastically modernised by the impact of computer science. It was a technologically utopian structure of feeling, positivistic and ‘scientistic’”. 

Evidence of the sentiments described by Mellor could be observed in British painting of the 1960s, especially among a group of artists associated with Roy Ascott and the Ealing College of Art, such as his colleagues Bernard Cohen and R.B. Kitty and his student Steve Willats, who founded the journal Control in 1966. Eduardo Paolozzi’s collage techniques of the early 1950s likewise “embodied the spirit of various total systems,” which may possibly have been “partially stimulated by the cross-disciplinary investigations connected with the new field of cybernetics”. Cybernetics offered these and other artists a scientific model for constructing a system of visual signs and relationships, which they attempted to achieve by utilising diagrammatic and interactive elements to create works that functioned as information systems. 

THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF CYBERNETICS

The scientific discipline of cybernetics emerged out of attempts to regulate the flow of information in feedback loops in order to predict, control, and automate the behaviour of mechanical and biological systems. Between 1942 an 1954, the Macy Conferences provided an interdisciplinary forum in which various theories of the nascent field were discussed. The result was the integration of information theory, computer models of binary information processing, and neurophysiology in order to synthesize a totalizing theory of “control and communication in the animal and the machine”. 

Cybernetics offered an explanation of phenomena in terms of the exchange of information in systems. It was derived, in part, from information theory, pioneered by the mathematician Claude Shannon. By reducing information to quantifiable probabilities, Shannon developed a method to predict the accuracy with which source information could be encoded, transmitted, received and decoded. Information theory provided a model for explaining how messages flowed through feedback loops in cybernetic systems. Moreover, by treating information as a generic substance, like the zeros and ones of computer code, it enabled cybernetics to theorise parallels between the exchange of signals in electro-mechanical systems and in neural networks of humans and other animals. Cybernetics thus held great promise for creating intelligent machines, as well as for helping to unlock the mysteries of the brain and consciousness. W. Ross Ashby’s Design for a Brain (1952) and F.H. George’s The Brain as Computer (1961) are important works in this regard and suggest the early alliance between cybernetics, information theory, and the field that would come to be known as artificial intelligence. 

Information in a cybernetic system is dynamically transferred and fed back among its constituent elements, each informing the others of its status, thus enabling the whole to regulate itself in order to maintain a state of operational equilibrium, or homeostasis. Cybernetics could be applied not only to industrial systems, but to social, cultural, environmental, and biological systems as well. 

Much research leading to cybernetics, information theory, and computer decision-making was either explicitly or implicitly directed towards (or applicable to) military applications. During World War II, Norbert Wiener collaborated with Julian Bigelow on developing an anti-aircraft weapon that could predict the  behaviour of enemy aircraft based on their prior behaviour. After the war, Wiener took an anti-militaristic stance and refused to work on defence projects. 

Cybernetic research and development during the Cold War contributed to the ongoing buildup of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Indeed, the high-tech orchestration of information processing and computer-generated, telecommunicated strategies employed by the U.S. military suggests nothing short of a cybernetic war machine. 

To summarize, cybernetics brings together several related propositions: (1) phenomena are fundamentally contingent; (2) the behaviour of a system can, nonetheless, be determined probabilistically; (3) animals and machines function in quite similar ways with regard to the transfer of information, so a unified theory of this process can be articulated; and (4) the behavior of humans and machines can be automated and controlled by regulating the transfer of information. 

There is, in cybernetics, a fundamental shift away from the attempt to analyse either the behavior of individual machines or humans as independent phenomena. What becomes the focus of inquiry is the dynamic process by which the transfer of information among machines and/or humans alters behaviour at the systems level. 

CYBERNETICS AND AESTHETICS: COMPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES

The application of cybernetics to artistic concerns depended on the desire and ability of artists to draw conceptual correspondences that joined the scientific discipline with contemporary aesthetic discourses.

The merging of cybernetics and art must be understood in the context of ongoing aesthetic experiments with duration, movement and process. Although the roots of this tendency go back further, the French impressionist painters systematically explored the durational and perceptual limits of art in novel ways that undermined the physical integrity of matter and emphasised the fleeting-ness of ocular sensation. The cubists, reinforced by Henri Bergson’s theory of durée, developed a formal language dissolving perspectival conventions and utilising found objects. (Durée - the consciousness linking past, present, and future, dissolving the diachronic appearance of categorical time, and providing a unified experience of the synchronic relatedness of continuous change). Such disruptions of perceptual expectations and discontinuities in spatial relations, combined with juxtapositions of representations of things seen and things in themselves, all contributed to suggesting metaphorical wrinkles in time and space. 

The patio-temporal dimensions of consciousness were likewise fundamental to Italian futurist painting and sculpture, notably that of Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, who were also inspired by Bergson. Like that of the cubists, their work remained static and only implied movement. Some notable early 20th-century sculpture experimented with putting visual form into actual motion, such as Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913) and Precision Optics (1920), Naum Gabo’s Kinetic Construction (1920) and Lázsló Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator (1923-30). Gabo’s work in particular, which produced a virtual volume only when activated, made motion an intrinsic quality of the art object, further emphasising temporality. In Moholy-Nagy’s kinetic work, light bounced off the gyrating object and reflected onto the floor and walls, not only pushing the temporal dimensions of sculpture, but expanding its spatial dimensions into the external environment. 

By the 1950s, experimentation with duration and motion by sculptors such as Schöffer, Jean Tinguely, Len Lye, and Takis gave rise to the broad, international movement known as kinetic art. Schöffer’s CYSP 1, for example, was programmed to respond electronically to its environment, actively involving the viewer in the temporal experience of the work. In this work, Schöffer drew on constructivist aesthetic ideas that had been developing for 3/4 of a century and intentionally merged them with the relatively new field of cybernetics. In Paris, in 1959, Romanian-born artist Daniel Spoerri founded Editions MAT (Multiplication d’Art Transformable), which published affordable multiples of work by artists such as Duchamp, Man Ray, Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely. Vasarely’s “participative boxes”, for example, included a steel frame and magnetised coloured squares and circles that “enabled the buyer to assemble his own ‘Vasarely’”. 

The interactive spirit of kinetic art gave birth in the 1960s to the Nouvelle Tendance collectives. Groups such as the Groupe de Recherche d’Art visuel (GRAV) in Paris and ZERO in Germany, for example, worked with diverse media to explore various aspects of kinetic art and audience participation. Taking audience participation in the direction of political action, after 1957 the Situationist International theory of détournement (diversion) offered a strategy for how artists might alter pre-existing aesthetic and social circumstances in order to reconstruct the conditions of everyday life. 

Through cross-pollination, the compositional strategy of audience engagement that emerged in Western concert music after World War II also played an important role in the creation of participatory art in the United States. Although not directly related to cybernetics, these artistic pursuits can be interpreted loosely as an independent manifestation of the aesthetic concern with the regulation of a system through the feedback of information among its elements. 

The most prominent example of this tendency, the American composer John Cage’s 4′33″, premiered in 1952. Written for piano but having no notes, this piece invoked the ambient sounds of the environment (including the listener’s own breathing, a neighbour’s cough, the crumpling of a candy wrapper) as integral to its content and form. Cage’s publications and his lectures at the New School influenced numerous visual artists, notably Allan Kaprow, a founder of happenings (who was equally influenced by Pollock’s gestural abstraction), George Brecht, and Yoko Ono, whose “event scores” of the late 1950s anticipated Fluxus performance. 

Robert Morris’ Box with the Sound of Its Own Making (1961) explicitly incorporated the audible process of the object’s coming into being as an integral part of the work. Morris’ 1964 exhibition at the Green Gallery featured unitary forms that invoked the viewer as an active component in the environment. 

In his provocative essay “Art and Objecthood”, the art historian Michael Fried wrote disparagingly of the way minimalist sculpture created a “situation”. He interpreted this “theatrical” quality as antithetical to the essence of sculpture. The interactive quality that Fried denigrated is at the heart of Ascott’s Change Paintings and his later cybernetic artworks of the 1960s...focused attention on creating interactive situations in order to free art from aesthetic idealism by placing it in a more social context. 

By the 1960s, cybernetics had become increasingly absorbed into popular consciousness. French artist Jacques Gabriel exhibited his paintings Cybernétique I and Cybernétique II in “Catastrophe”, a group show and happening organised by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Raymond Cordier in Paris in 1962. Also in 1962, Suzanne de Coninck opened the Centre d’Art cybernetic in Paris, where Ascott had a solo exhibition in 1964. Wen-Ying Tsai’s Cybernetic Sculpture (1969) consisted of stainless-steel rods that vibrated in response to patterns of light generated by a stroboscope and to the sound of participants clapping their hands. 

In 1966, Nam June Paik drew a striking parallel between Buddhism and cybernetics: 

Cybernated art is very important, but art for cybernated life is more important, and the latter need not be cybernated... Cybernetics, the science of pure relations, or relationship itself, has its origin in karma... The Buddhists also say Karma is samsara Relationship is metempsychosis. (Paik, 1966)

In this statement, Paik suggested that Eastern philosophy and Western science offered alternative understandings of systematic phenomena. Buddhist accounts of cosmic cycles such as samsara (the cycle of life and death) and metempsychosis (the transmigration of souls) could also be explained in terms of scientific relations by cybernetics. 

Audio feedback and the use of tape loops, sound synthesis, and computer-generated composition reflected a cybernetic awareness of information, systems, and cycles. Such techniques became widespread in the 1960s, following the pioneering work of composers like Cage, Lejaren Hiller, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis in the 1960s. Perhaps most emblematically, the feedback of Jimi Hendrix’s screaming electric guitar at Woodstock (1966) appropriated the National Anthem as a countercultural battle cry. 

The visual effects of electronic feedback became a focus of artistic research in the late 1960s, when video equipment first reached the consumer market. Woody and Steina Vasulka, for example, used all manner and combination of audio and visual signals to generate electronic feedback in their respective or corresponding media. 

Not all artists were so enamoured with cybernetics. The artists associated with Art & Language applied scientific principles to art in a tongue-in-cheek manner, suggesting a parallel between the dogma of cybernetics and the dogma of modernist aesthetics. For example, ini the key to 22 Predicates: The French Army (1967), Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin offered a legend of abbreviations for the French Army (FA), the Collection of Men and Machines (CMM), and the Group of Regiments (GR). Using logic reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, the artists then described a variety of relationships among these elements as part of a system (of gibberish). 

This ironic description mocked the manner of cybernetic explanations. It reduced to absurdity the systematisation of relationships among individuals, groups, and institutions that Ascott employed in defining his theory of a cybernetic art matrix (CAM) in the essay “Behaviorist Art and the Cybernetic Vision”. Similarly, in Harold Hurrell’s The Cybernetic Art Work That Nobody Broke (1969), a spurious computer program for interactively generating color refused to allow the user to interact beyond the rigid banality of binary input. If the user inputted a number other than 0 or 1, the program proffered the message: YOU HAVE NOTHING, OBEY INSTRUCTIONS! If the user inputted a non-number, it said there was an ERROR AT STEP 3.2. 

On each plexiglas panel of Ascott’s Change Paintings was a painterly gesture that the artist conceived of as a “seed” or “ultimate shape.” Seeking to capture the essence of the phenomena of potentiality, these morphological art works may also be related to the ideas of organic development described in Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form and to the ideas of élan vital and durée developed by Bergson. The Change Paintings can be seen as an interactive visual construction in which the vital essence of the work can creatively evolve, revealing the multiple stages of its nature (as in the growth of a biological organism), over the duration of its changing compositional states. The infinite combination of these compositional transformations constituted an aesthetic unity, a metaconsciousness, or Bergsonian durée, including all its possible states in the past, present and future. 

Ascott visually suggests equivalences between I Ching hexagrams, binary notation of digital computers, scatterplots of quantum probability, wave forms of information transmissions, and biomorphic shapes. 

A similar convergence of methods characterises works like Cloud Template (1969) and Change Map (1969). Ascott created these sculptural paintings using aleatory methods. By throwing coins (as in casting the I Ching) on top of a sheet of plywood, chance patterns developed. The artist drew lines and curves connecting the points marked by the coins, then cut through the wood, progressively removing segments and creating an unpredictable shape. Ascott’s use of chance methods is related both to Dada and Surrealism and to the techniques of Cage, who determined parameters of his musical compositions by casting the I Ching. 

At the same time, the verticality of this method shares affinities with the cartographic and horizontal qualities in the work of Pollock and Duchamp. Pollock’s decision to remove the canvas from the vertical plane of the easel and paint it on the horizontal plane of the floor, for example, altered the conventional, physical working relationship of the artist to his or her work. Similarly, Ascott’s corporeal orientation to his materials became horizontal, whereby the artist looked down on his canvas from a bird’s-eye view. This shift embodied and made explicit the ongoing reconceptualization of painting from a “window on the world” to a cosmological map of physical and metaphysical forces. The random method that Duchamp used for creating 3 Standard Stoppages (1913-14) also demanded a horizontal relationship between artist and artwork. Duchamp’s related Network of Stoppages (1914), which can be interpreted as a visual precursor to the decision trees of system theory, further offered a diagrammatic model for the interconnected visual and semantic networks of Ascott’s transparent Diagram Boxes. 

For thousands of years the I Ching has been consulted on choosing a path towards the future; much more recently cybernetics emerged in part from Wiener’s military research, which attempted to anticipate the future behaviour of enemy aircraft. 

TELEMATICS 

Telematics, or the convergence of computers and telecommunications, is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in the developed world. Anyone who has corresponded using e-mail, surfed the World Wide Web, or withdrawn money from an automatic teller has participated in a telematic exchange. 

Ascott’s theorisation of telematic art embraced the idea that any radical transformation of the social structure would emerge developmentally as the result of interactions between individuals and institutions in the process of negotiating relationships and implementing new technological structures. 

Like a cybernetic system (in which information can be communicated via feedback loops between elements), telematics comprises an extensive global network in which information can flow between interconnected elements. Drawing a parallel between cybernetics and computer telecommunications, William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” in his 1984 novel Neuromancer. Cyberspace applies a virtual location to the state of mind an individual experiences in telematic networks. Telematics implies the potential exchange of information among all nodes in the network, proposing what might amount to a decentralised yet collective state of mind. Whereas cyberspace emphasises the phenomenology of individual experience, telematics emphasises the emergence of a collective consciousness. 

TELEMATICS AND ART

Telematics permits the artist to liberate art from its conventional embodiment in a physical object located in a unique geographic location. It provides a context for interactive aesthetic encounters and facilitates artistic collaborations among globally dispersed individuals. It emphasises the process of artistic creation and the systematic relationship between artist, artwork, and audience as part of a social network of communication. In addition to these qualities, Ascott argues that a distinctive feature of telematic art is the capability of computer-mediated communications to function asynchronously. Early satellite and slow-scan projects enabled interactive exchanges between participants at remote locations, but they had to take place in a strictly synchronous manner in real time; that is, all participants had to participate at the same time. In Ascott’s telematic artworks of the sae period, information could be entered at any time and place, where it became part of a database that could be accessed and transformed whenever a participant wished, from wherever there were ordinary telephone lines. 

Telematic art draws on the heritage of diverse currents in experimental art after World War II, including various strains of art and technology, such as cybernetic art, kinetic art, and video art, happenings and performance art, mail art, and conceptual art. What, after all, could be more kinetic and performative than an interactive exchange between participants? What could be more technological than computer-mediated global telecommunications networks? And what could be more conceptual than the semantic questions raised by the flow of ideas and creation of meaning via the transmission of immaterial bits of digital information? 

PRECURSORS

The first use of telecommunications as an artistic medium may well have occurred in 1922, when the Hungarian constructivist artist and later Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy produced his Telephone Pictures. He “ordered by telephone from a sign factory five paintings in porcelain enamel.” Their commercial method of manufacture implicitly questioned traditional notions of the isolated, individual artist and the unique, original art object. 

The idea of telecommunications as an artistic medium is made more explicit in Bertolt Brecht’s theory of radio. The German dramatist’s manifesto-like essay “The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication” (1932) has offered ongoing inspiration not only to experimental radio projects but to artists working with a wide range of interactive media...Brecht sought to change radio “from its sole function as a distribution medium to a vehicle of communication [with] two-way send/receive capability.” Brecht’s essay proposed that media should

[L]et the listener speak as well as hear...bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. 

Written in the midst of the rise to power of the Nazi dictatorship, Brecht’s theory of two-way communication envisioned a less centralised and hierarchical network of communication, such that all points in the system were actively involved in producing meaning. In addition, radio was intended to serve a didactic function in the socialist society Brecht advocated. 

As a variant on the two-way communication that Brecht advocated for radio, artists have utilised the postal service. While such work does not explicitly employ electronic telecommunications technology, and reaches a much smaller potential audience, it anticipated the use of computer networking in telematic art. In the early 1960s, the American artist George Brecht mailed “event cards” in order to distribute his “idea happenings” to friends outside of an art world context. 

In 1968, Ray Johnson organised the first meeting of the New York Correspondence School, which expanded to become an international movement. 

This postal network developed by artists explored non-traditional media, promoted an aesthetics of surprise and collaboration, challenged the boundaries of (postal) communications regulations, and bypassed the official system of art with its curatorial practices, commodification of the artwork, and judgment value...[It] became a truly international...network, with thousands of artists feverishly exchanging, transforming, and re-exchanging written and audiovisual messages in multiple media. 

Mail art was especially important to artists working, not only in remote parts of South America, and even Canada, but in countries where access to contemporary Western art was severely limited, such as Eastern Europe. Many such artists also embraced telecommunications technologies, such as fax, which expanded the capabilities of mail art. In Hungary, for example, György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay founded Art Pool in the mid 1970s in order to obtain, exchange, and distribute information about international art, which was forbidden behind the Iron Curtain. Art Pool maintains an extensive physical online archive of mail and fax art. 

Some of the earliest telecommunications projects attempted by visual artists emerged from the experimental art practice known as “happenings”. In Three Country Happening (1966), a collaboration between Marta Minujin in Buenos Aires, Kaprow in New York, and Wolf Vostell in Berlin, a telecommunications link was planned to connect the artists for a live, interactive exchange across three continents. Ultimately, funding for the expensive satellite connection failed to materialize, so each artist enacted his or her own happening and, as Kaprow has explained, “imagined interacting with what the others might have been doing at the same time.” 

Three years later Kaprow created an interactive video happening for “The Medium Is the Medium,” a thirty-minute experimental television program produced by Fred Barzyk for the Boston public television station WBGH. Kaprow’s piece Hello (1969) utilised five television cameras and 27 monitors, connecting four remote locations over a closed-circuit television network. 

Groups of people were dispatched to the various locations with instructions as to what they would say on camera, such as “hello, I see you,” when acknowledging their own image or that of a friend. Kaprow functioned as “director” in the studio control room. If someone at the airport were talking to someone at M.I.T., the picture might suddenly switch and one would be talking to doctors at the hospital. 

Through his interventions as director, Kaprow was able to provide a critique of the disruptive manner by which technology mediates interaction. Hello metaphorically short-circuited the television network - and thereby called attention to the connections made between actual people. 

Indeed, many early artistic experiments with television and video were, in part, motivated by a Brechtian desire to wrest the power of representation from the control of corporate media and make it available to the public. Douglas Davis’ Electronic Hokkaidim (1971) enabled television viewers to participate in a live telecast by contributing ideas and sounds via telephone. This work “linked symbiotically with its viewers whose telephoned chants, songs, and comments reversed through the set, changing and shaping images in the process”. Davis later commented: ���My attempt was and is to inject two-way metaphors - via live telecasts - into our thinking process...I hope [to] make a two-way telecast function on the deepest level of communication...sending and receiving...over a network that is common property.” Davis’ work exemplifies the long and distinguished history of artistic attempts to democratise media by enabling users to participate as content-providers, rather than passive consumers of prefabricated entertainment and commercial messages. 

In Expanded Cinema (1970), a classic and perceptive account of experimental art in the 1960s, the media historian Gene Youngblood has documented how some of the first interactive video installations also challenged the unidirectionality of commercial media. In works like Iris (1968) and Contact: A Cybernetic Sculpture (1969) by Les Levine and Wipe Cycle (1969) by Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, video cameras captured various images of the viewer(s), which were fed back, often with time delays or other distortions, onto a bank of monitors. Levine noted, Iris “turns the viewer into information...Contact is a system that synthesises man with his technology...the people are the software.” Wipe Cycle was related to satellite communications, “You’re as much a piece of information as tomorrow morning’s headlines - as a viewer you make a satellite relationship to the information. And the satellite which is you is incorporated into the thing which is being sent back to the satellite.” While these works were limited to closed-loop video, they offered an unprecedented opportunity for the public to see itself as the content of television. 

Significant museum exhibitions in 1969-70 also helped to popularise the use of interactive telecommunications in art. Partly in homage to Moholy-Nagy (who emigrated to Chicago after World War II), the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art organised the group exhibition “Art by Telephone” in 1969. “Artists were invited to telephone the museum with instructions for making an artwork. Dick Higgins asked that visitors be allowed to speak into a telephone, adding their voices to an ever denser ‘vocal collage.’ Dennis Oppenheim had the museum call him once a week to ask his weight. Wolf Vostell supplied telephone numbers that people could call to hear instructions for a 3-minute happening”. In 1970, Jack Burnham’s exhibition “Software, Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art” examined how information processing could be interpreted as a metaphor for art. “Software” included Hans Haacke’s News (1969), consisting of teletype machines connected to international news service bureaus, which printed continuous scrolls of information about world events. Ted Nelson and Ned Woodman displayed Labyrinth (1970), the first public exhibition of a hypertext system. This computerised work allowed users to interactively construct nonlinear narratives through a database of information. 

On July 30, 1971, the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) organized “Utopia Q&A”, an international telecommunications project consisting of telex stations in New York, Tokyo, Ahmedabad, India, and Stockholm. Telex (invented in 1846 was essentially mechanical, and not developed since the late 19th century) enabled the remote exchange of texts via specialised local terminals. Participants from around the world posed questions and offered prospective answers regarding changes that they anticipated would occur over the next decade. It poignantly utilised telecommunications to enable an interactive exchange across geopolitical borders and time zones, creating a global village of ideas about the future. 

As an outgrowth of their “Aesthetic Research in Telecommunications” projects begun in 1975, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz organised the “Satellite Arts Project: A Space with No Boundaries” (1977). With the support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the artists produced composite images of participants, thus enabling an interactive dance concert amongst geographically disparate performers, two in Maryland and two in California. On video monitors at these locations was a composite image of the four dancers, who coordinated their movements, mindful of the latency, or time-delay, with those of their remote partners projected on the screen. 

The “Send/Receive Satellite Network” (1977) emerged from Keith Sonnier’s idea to make a work of art using satellite communications and Liza Bear’s commitment to “gaining access to publicly funded technology...[and]...establishing a two-way network among artists”. Bear brought the project to fruition, orchestrating the collaboration between the Centre for New Art Activities and the Franklin Street Arts Center in New York, Art Com/La Mamelle Inc. in San Francisco, and NASA...For three and one-half hours, participants on both coasts engaged in a two-way interactive satellite transmission, which was shown live on cable television in New York and San Francisco. An estimated audience of 25,000 saw bi-coastal discussions on the impact of new technologies on art, and improvised, interactive dance and music performances that were mixed in real time and shown on a split screen.

“Good Morning Mr. Orwell” was a satellite telecast that Nam June Paik organised on New Year’s Day, 1984. It was intended, Paik explained as a liberator and multidirectional alternative to the threat posed by “Big Brother” surveillance of the kind that George Orwell had warned of in his novel 1984: “I see video not as a dictatorial medium but as a liberating one...satellite television can cross international borders and bridge enormous cultural gaps...the best way to safeguard against the world of Orwell is to make this medium interactive so it can represent the spirit of democracy, not dictatorship.” Broadcast live from New York, Paris, and San Francisco to the United States, France, Canada, Germany, and Korea, the event reached a broad international audience and included the collaboration of John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Charlotte Moorman, and Salvador Dali among others. 

EXTENSIONS: TELEMATIC ART AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB

The availability of relatively inexpensive and powerful personal computers, the creation of hypertext markup language (HTML), and the free distribution to consumers of graphical user interfaces (GUI - pronounced “goo-ey” browsers, such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer), all contributed to enabling the multimedia capabilities of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. 

Many artists have utilised the hyperlinking capability of the Web in order to create nonlinear text and multimedia narratives. Melinda Rackham’s “Line” (1997), for example, subtly integrated visual and textual elements. Using a simple and intuitive interface, the 17 screens of this hypermedia fairy tale about identity in cyberspace incorporated both associative connections via text and random elements via the image. A map allowed the participator to visualise where she or he was in relation to the other screens. Users were invited to submit their own personal views via e-mail, which were incorporated into the work, adding intimacy and complexity. 

Eduardo Kac has created numerous “telepresence” works involving the interaction between humans, machines, plants, and animals. He defines “telepresence” as the experience of being physically present and having one’s own point of view at a remote location. His “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1995), created in collaboration with Ikuo Nakamura, used telematics in a telepresence installation in order to facilitate remote communication between nonhumans, in this case, a canary in Kentucky and a philodendron plant in New York. As Kac explained: 

An electrode was placed on the plant’s leaf to sense its response to the singing of the bird. The voltage fluctuation of the plant was monitored through a [computer] running software called Interactive Brain-Wave analyser. This information was fed into another [computer]...which controlled a MIDI sequencer. The electronic sounds [sent from the plant to the bird] were pre-recorded, but the order and the duration were determined in real time by the plant’s response to the singing of the bird. 

Although the work spotlighted the process of communication between the bird and the plant, Kac noted that humans interacted with the bird and the plant as well, causing the bird to sing more or less, and the plant to activate a greater or fewer number of sounds. In this way, humans, plant, and bird became part of a cybernetic system of interrelated feedback loops, each affecting the behaviour of the other and the system as a whole. 

Since commencing his controversial suspension performances in 1976, perhaps no artist has challenged the physical limits of the body with respect to technology more than Stelarc. In Ping Body, first performed on April 10, 1996, in Sydney, he wired his body and his robotic “Third Hand” to the Internet, and allowed variations in the global transfer of online information to trigger involuntary physiological responses. The artist’s arms and legs jerked in an exotic and frightening dance. As he explained: 

The Internet...provide[s]...the possibility of an external nervous system which may be able to telematically scale up the body to new sensory experiences. For example when, in the Ping Body performance, the body’s musculature is driven by the ebb and flow of Internet activity, it’s as if the body has been telematically scaled up and is a kind of “sensor” or “nexus” manifesting this external data flow. 

Ping Body conflated the standard active-passive relationship of human to machine. While, ultimately, the artist was the master of his work, he permitted his body to be a slave to more or less random exchange of amorphous data on the Internet. At the same time, Stelarc retained control over a robotic arm activated by muscle contractions in his body. As in most of Stelarc’s work, the artist remained the central performer/subject of the piece. 

As a final example of Web-based art beyond the Internet, “TechnoSphere,” spearheaded by Jane Prophet beginning in 1995, combined telematics and artificial life, using the Web as an interface to an evolution simulator that enables users to create their own creatures and monitor them as they grow, evolve, and die in a virtual three-dimensional environment. A series of menus allowed users to select attributes to create an artificial life form that entered the virtual world of “TechnoSphere” and competed for survival and reproduction. Users selected various physical features (eyes, mouths, motility, and so on), chose between herbivorous or carnivorous feeding, and assigned a name to the creature they had parented. The condition and activities of each creature - its weight, battles with other creatures, reproductive success, and so on - were calculated using natural selection algorithms, and the creator was periodically e-mailed updates on his or her offspring’s status. It shared many concerns including biological morphology, interactivity, systematic feedback, and telematic connectivity. 

[timespakistan]

Art and its audience | Art & Culture Meher Afroz Aab Nayab. Everyone is familiar with the small figurine of the Dancing Girl from Mohenjo-Daro, but no one knows about the audience she was performing for. Presence of people, not only at a religious ritual, but in any other public exchange is essential, especially for art, because the language exists between the private and the public. The work of art is a means to communicate with others: of same period or region, or belonging to a distant land or a different time (future). Even though the script of Indus Valley Civilisation has still not been deciphered, some believe that the Dancing Girl was called Sambara. One could argue or refute this assumption, yet the name is important for another context, and purpose – to provide identity. The Culture Department of Sindh Government, recently established an art gallery at the premises of Liaquat Memorial Library, Karachi, and baptised it Sambara Art Gallery. It also organised Art Fest Karachi, curated by Waheeda Baloch, from March 24 to 28. Sambara was reminded on many occasions and for various reasons in the gallery filled with paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, miniatures, video projections and mixed media pieces. The exhibition was accompanied by three panel discussions on certain aspects of art, much attended affairs, in which while the speakers were known personalities, the audience, unexpectedly, differed from the usual crowd of withdrawn, reluctant and bored onlookers you come across in art exhibitions, literary festivals, lectures, and seminars. The fact that most participants preferred to talk in Urdu instead of English, the lingua franca of art, was meaningful in every sense of the word. Talking on contemporary art in Urdu compelled speakers to forsake jargon and stock phrases, and look for honesty in their conversation, whether on the Life and Works of Meher Afroz, Performance Art, or the Evolution of Artistic Thought and Practice. The spirit of inquiry experienced at the panel discussions, was evident in the display of Art Fest Karachi, and in its appreciation by students, art enthusiasts, and general public, who not only came from many neighbourhoods of Karachi, but also from far off places in Sindh to attend talks as and to see the show. Karachi thus looked like a part of Sindh it is – a fact that is rarely acknowledged. This was mainly because most of the art came from the interior Sindh, contributed particularly by the teachers, graduates and students of the University of Sindh-Jamshoro. However, the local identity of artists was an extraneous, if not a superfluous detail, because the works on the wall never revealed an ethnicity: hardly a vernacular attraction, an indigenous character or a touristic setting. These works represented concerns, repeatedly witnessed in the modern and contemporary art. Waheeda Baloch, the curator of the Art Fest Karachi, tried to segregate exhibits according to subjects, imagery and medium, such as gender issues, figurative images, video-installation/projection. Some well-known artists were specially invited for this exhibition and a large number of emerging artists submitted their creations. In both categories, there were surprises. For example, a section of the show was devoted to Meher Afroz. Recognising and paying homage to a unique individual, who has produced works of an exquisite nature in diverse mediums, techniques and scale. Artworks from various phases of her career conveyed the range of her practice as well as overlapping themes and overarching sensibility. There was an etching print comprising a torso and masks floating in white space. Her sensitive rendering of human and plants evoked emotional responses from the viewer, as was the case with her mixed media series Aab Nayab, 2019. In these, the artist constructed subtle textures, primarily in shades of singular colours (yellows, reds, blues, browns). Most of her pieces looked like a cross between pages of ancient manuscripts and sheets of old fabrics. Mehr Afroz has employed stitching, collages, and layers of materials to assemble dense and rich surfaces, which do not narrate a scene, but stir the inner state of a human being. Hence the paintings function as mirrors. Baudelaire writes “caricatures are often the most faithful mirror of life”, but so is art; thus, a mirror-like quality was blended into cultural memory by Meher Afroz. Her aesthetics is drawn from craft, language and religious symbols. Rug-like tapestry (with cushions) raised from the floor, or large dark fabric with small knives and swords woven as if the script of a cryptic vocabulary extended her practice from the conventional paintings and prints to artworks that speak a mystic and poetic language. The mega art event included works by other artists recognised for their distinct styles: Amjad Ali Talpur presented a portrait of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto rendered in miniature painting, comprising 23 small blocks, which, echoing a game, could be shifted with numerous possibilities, to adjust the iconic face in diverse compositions and varying features. A comment, probably, on how the personality of a national hero is modified for temporary needs/gains. Nizam Dhari, with a similar approach but using a different image, split/stretched a still life of Paul Cezanne. Two versions, both in separate colours were layered on top of each other, resembling a printing mistake. His work also challenged our habit of viewing the world in precise and prescribed hues. The divided vision was further experienced in the work of Mudassar Rashidi, in which part of a train station was painted next to the video of an identical spot. A number of other artists attempted to highlight social issues using popular imagery and handy props. For instance, Manizhe Ali’s installation I Speak, You Hear Me, Together We Are pointed “to the power structures”, signifying individuals reduced to blind and mute in terms of their conditioning. Plastic dolls balanced around a circle of decayed rose petals, and along with mesh screen, fairy lights and audio added into the atmosphere of this ‘familiar’ but unbearable macabre. Concerns from societal to global were visible in another work, by Jumana Tayyebi. The painter, taking inspiration from the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti’s Mappa, created a map of the world in respective country flags, but changed existing geography by inserting her self-portrait composed of national flags in the centre of the planet; alluding to the position of a female in the world (order). Several other artists explored imagery and materials to express ideas beyond art. A remarkable installation, Shajra-e-Nasab by Saliha Naz responded to the notion of family tree, by installing trees composed of fibre in the venue’s lawn. The work had several connotations. The essence of a family tree is conserving a clan/tribe’s history, but most memory trees are limited to male names. Saliha Naz erected her Shajra-e-Nasab in a material often associated with and identified by women. Thus securing a place for herself in the hierarchy of a male dominated society. Art Fest Karachi was also an endeavour to claim a rightful space for individuals, artists as well as visitors, who have been treated like outsiders to the mainstream discourse of art. It woke up artists to the reality of a land that lies beneath their feet. The writer is an art critic based in Lahore. https://timespakistan.com/art-and-its-audience-art-culture/15155/?wpwautoposter=1617555625