[-empyre-] introducing week 3

[Alan Sondheim]

I agree with Alicia, and I think the Right, judging by the U.S. among 
other countries, operates with the symbolic and its potential rigidity, 
much more effectively than the left; I do find beheadings, for example, 
clearly useful as aesthetic/symbolic acts. Self-critique is far more 
difficult than critique of others; the latter results in a highly useful 
reification, and the transformation of complexity into objects capable of 
annihilation is reminiscent of the video game. As far as Guernica goes, 
Franco won. And let's say for a moment Alicia is right - what then?

(There have been so many artworks, paeans, dirges, warnings, all this for 
thousands of years, and what have we learned? To spread the havoc via 
social media? To be more effective in our slaughter?)

Again, what is to be done?

- Alan

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014, Ana Vald?s wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I am having the priviledge of speaking with Alicia Migdal (the joys of
> the presenciality :), she is visiting me and we are speaking about the
> topics of this month. Alicia says what happens now seems impossible to
> reverse, not political acts not us. Alicia says nobody from the
> symbolical field can change things. But what happens, I say, par
> example, Picasso painted Gernica. His painting did not help one of the
> dead in Gernica but for us the generations to come Guernica became a
> symbol of the fascism and the resistance against it.
> Alicia says when you paint or write the effect of your creation is
> often delayed, maybe long time later others see in it the value of the
> expressed.
> I am thinking about Peter Weiss marvelous book "The Esthetics of the
> Resistance" when he reads the altar of Pergamus as a struggle between
> workers and owners.
> The altar was made for several thousands years ago and it's still
> something valuable to be reinterpreted how many times you wish.
> We were thinking of the Greek tragedies which had as explicit aim to
> arouse pity and terror in the spectator, as methods to purge the soul.
> They were warnings...
>
> Ana and Alicia
>