#the iconography perhaps. not the aesthetic as such

[spacedkey]

technically one of those clowns is only half based on an ebay one, the one with a funny snout is because i saw one that looked like he had a snout but when i got him his face was flat..

[sonofcelluloid]

Darling!— Oh… I see you’ve found my artistic rendition of us… Please, don’t be dramatic. The gore is purely aesthetic. I am an artist, Daniel, and when the vision strikes I am but a vessel for it. Yes, the nudity is paramount. As is the religious iconography! It is tasteful! You’re being awfully critical of my expression of our love... If you hate our joint visage so much perhaps I shall not grant you the privilege of experiencing it in the immediate future. Enjoy the couch, beloved. I’ll shutter the blinds for you.

[brodinsons]

"Instead of highlighting the character's Jewish origins, 'Man of Steel' features a Randian Christ-figure who commits genocide against his entire race, then causes multiple mass casualty events."

I apologize in advance for the incoming rant but I am sick and tired of sitting quietly for this relentless bullshit and at some point, enough is enough. I'm not naming the individual I'm quoting because I'm not interested in starting fights. This is my space and I'm venting a collective decade of frustration and anger.

Noun. Randian (plural Randians) A follower of Ayn Rand.

God damn, y'all just can't help yourselves, can you? You just slurp up every bit of nonsense from all those puffed up "YouTube Essayists" with god complexes from 2015 and take it as fucking fact.

Not to mention, y'all cannot seem to let a random baseless accusation from a disgraced sexual predator go. That's him! He's the one who started it! The very one to fling the first scrap of "Zack Snyder is a Randian Objectivist who hates Superman and is poisoning the DCEU!" bait out into the twittersphere for the rest of the ravenous bloggers to jump on. I refuse to take anyone's treatise on the modern superhero myth seriously if this is the depth they'll stoop to in the middle of their piece.

Snyder made one single offhand comment about maybe adapting 'The Fountainhead' (for its aesthetics, mostly) years ago and now he's a sexist racist fascist objectivist and the root of all evil.

Objectivism: "The exceptional people among us have a divine right to decide our fate and we should not oppose them."

Does that sound like the message of any of his DC films? Movies that end with speeches about heroes wanting to be on the ground to do good in crises and how good humanity can be despite its faults? What about MoS specifically, where the ultimate immigrant allegory struggles to find his place in a world that does not accept him yet still fights for and protects humanity because this world is his chosen home?

Not to mention, where the fuck is this genocide-committing Jesus Superman? Clark t-poses out of the Black Zero one goddamn time while looking sadly back at his dad because Snyder is a visual filmmaker with a penchant for dramatic shots and everyone loses their fucking minds. He goes to the Lutheran church he presumably attended with Martha & Jonathan as a child to seek the counsel of Father Leone because Clark Kent is not canonically Jewish (may the memory of his Jewish creators be a blessing). There's stained glass iconography of Christ in the background at one point because it's a Christian church in middle America. Clark himself never once espouses any religious lines or strict beliefs. Nor does he position himself as a "Christ-figure", either through himself or via the story??????? He doesn't want the responsibility that comes with putting that suit and cape on. But he does it anyway because he understands the stakes when shit gets real and he refuses to let his adoptive world pay for unwittingly bringing the worst remnants of his old world here.

Also, Clark only kills one person: Zod. The U.S. military "bombs" the Black Zero with the starcraft that brought Clark to earth in order to re-open the Phantom Zone and send Zod's forces (the pack of militaristic extremists known as the Sword of Rao) into it. Given what we know of the Phantom Zone in various canons, that's a fate almost worse than death. Then, after being given an ultimatum that either he dies or Zod will, he makes the impossible choice that will haunt him the rest of his life to save a human family moments from being obliterated by Zod's heat vision and kills the general. Nowhere in this catastrophic battle did he "commit genocide against his entire race" (did everyone forget that he himself is the Codex's host and therefore the living possibility of Krypton's rebirth?) or "cause multiple mass casualty events".

I understand that the scale of fictional damage was perhaps a touch more realistic than the near identical scale featured in all of the Avengers movies. It's fine if it's not your thing. Move along. That discomfort still doesn't give you enough leeway to point the finger at a rookie Superman on his first day on the job and say "all that destruction and death was his fault". He tried to take it out of the city! Zod—a vastly more experienced military leader with blind genetic fanaticism on his side, by contrast—refused to allow it. His goal was the annihilation of earth and as much collateral damage as possible (preferably the entire human race). Clark had to stand between humanity and that with zero combat experience and no clue he'd be forced into a no-win scenario to stop the carnage.

I'm tired. It has been ten years. I'm so fucking tired. Can you people give it a rest? None of you are the ultimate authority on superheroes and positioning yourselves as something dangerously close to that with these twitter threads and blog treatises and reviews full of big words in nerd outlets only poisons the fandom well further.

You are allowed to dislike things. You aren't even required to justify that dislike. What you aren't allowed to do is declare something objectively bad based on nothing but your own subjective reaction to it, then invent criticisms that aren't even applicable to the thing in question.

The day we lost the ability to differentiate between "I did not enjoy this media so I guess it wasn't for me" and "I did not enjoy this media and therefore NO ONE SHOULD BECAUSE REASONS I WILL INVENT FROM SECONDHAND HEARSAY" is the day media literacy ceased to exist in pop culture.

[faith-of-the-wheel]

Rudlós part 1. Introduction and Cognates

God of wild nature, disease and healing, archery, war, poetry, alcohol, and wisdom. He has always been of immense personal interest to me, as a proto-odin figure, a god of the Koryos. An almost liminal god of society, the savagery of war, wilderness, and disease, but also, poetry, alcohol, and healing. He is often depicted as being mounted on a horse, with a retinue of wolves following him.

A fascinating dichotomy, especially for the Proto-Indo-Europeans. They appear to have made a strong distinction between Defensive and Aggressive war. Perkwúnos is a protective deity, strongly correlated with Defensive war, giving Rudlos the other, invading aspect of conflict. He brings disease with arrows, which devastate communities and are often the biggest killers in war.

Yet, Rudlos is also associated with poetry, which we know was extremely important to the PIEs and possibly their main cultural expression of aesthetic beauty. The importance is also related to ritual and prayer in all likelihood. He associated with alcohol, and quite possibly hallucinogens, as he is sometimes seen as shamanic figure, guiding others on a path through the spiritual and granting divine knowledge he always seems to possess.

Art Credit: Wanderer by BrotherBjorn

Etymological Cognates (deities who share direct linguistic descendance with Rudlos):

The name could derives either from "rewd-/reud-" ("rend, tear apart"), or from "rud-/reu-" ("howl"). His name could be understood as "The Howler", an etymology shared by his linguistically closest descendant, the Vedic deity Rudra.

An alternative etymology interprets Rudra as the "red one", the "brilliant one", possibly derived from a lost root "rud-", ("red" or "ruddy") or alternatively, according to Grassman, "shining".

Stella Kramrisch notes a different etymology connected with the adjectival form "raudra", which means "wild", i.e., of "rude" (untamed) nature, and translates the name Rudra as "the wild one" or "the fierce god". R. K. Śarmā follows this alternative etymology and translates the name as "the terrible" in his glossary for the Shiva Sahasranama.

Another two likely cognates are found in Gaul, modern south eastern France. First is Rudianos. Manfred Lurker gives the name an etymology of "Red", connecting it to his being associated with Mars, reflecting the warlike nature of the god. There is also a prehistoric image of a mounted war-god, dated to the 6th Century BC, who could perhaps be Rudianos. The menhir-shaped stone depicts a roughly incised figure of a horseman, with an enormous head, riding down five severed heads. The iconography is evocative of the head-hunting exploits of the Celts, who hung the heads of their battle victims from their saddles, according to classical writers.

The second is Rudiobus, known only from a single inscription, on a bronze figurine of a prancing horse that reads: "Sacred to the god Rudiobus". This figure, from the 1st century BC, is one of a group found in Loiret, located in central northern France. It has been suggested by some that this may be an aspect of a Gaulish form of Mars instead an indigenous Celtic deity, but I consider that there just as good, if not higher chance of his him being related to, or a regional spelling of Rudianos.

Lastly, there is the slavic god Rugiaevit, Rugievit (Latin: Rugiaeuit) or Ruyevit. Worshiped on the German isle of Rügen, and primarily attested by Saxo Grammaticus, who's words we obviously have to be careful with.

There are two interpretations of the theonym. Rugiaevit is usually translated as "lord, ruler of Rügen". Often scholars propose to read the name as Ruyevit; Aleksander Gieysztor suggests combining the this interpretation with the root "ru-" existing in such words as "řuti" ("to roar"), and "ruja" ("roar of deer", "estrous, heat", as well as "fertility"), which is seen in the Old Russian word "rujenь –" a term for one of the autumn months that falls during the time of the estrous cycle examples: cf. Czech "říjen", Bulgarian "руен (ruen)", Serbo-Croatian "ру̑јан, rujan". Lubor Niederle, assuming the phonetic similarity of Ruyevit and Yarovit, concluded that the two gods were identical, but this opinion does not seem popular or particularly helpful beyond one possible etymology of "ruthless lord" which could fit well with Rudlos. The suffix "-vit" translates as "lord, ruler"; it is less often compared with the word "vitędzь" due to the borrowing of this word from Germanic languages (cf. viking).

Witczak and Kaczor (1995), cited by Mallory and Adams, take Old Russian Rъglъ ("Rŭglŭ") to be from a reconstructed Proto-Slavic *Rъdlъ ("Rŭdlŭ").

The Senowera document has the epithet Wā́tonos listed with his name. It is believed to be the PIE ancestor of Proto-Germanic Wōðanaz/Wōdunaz meaning "lord of frenzy", a name which becomes Wotan, Wodan, and Oðinn,(also Ódr, who is often believed to be a hypostasis of Oðinn) which we will get into later.

Thirdly, the typically separately reconstructed deity Léudheros (h₁leudʰero ('belonging to the people', hence 'free')) is prescribed in the Senowera document to potentially be an aspect or epithet of Rudlos. The name is primarily reconstructed from Liber and Lóðurr, who is poorly attested and whose etymology is highly controversial. Liber Pater ("The Free Father"), god of viticulture, wine, freedom, and male fertility. He cult was increasingly associated and absorbed by romanised Dionysus. Liber asserted plebeian rights to ecstatic release, self-expression and free speech.

We're gonna cover Léudheros another time as a separate deity, but we will take his possible status as an aspect of Rudlos into account when we do. In the next part, we're gonna compare the these various cognates from a mythological perspective.

[luxxsolaris]

Distressing like a Dandy

This is just a short little comment on a topic i've been researching lately! as part of my undergrad dissertation ive been looking into dandyism, however I just want to set as a preface that this is not a practise exclusive to homosexual men. It became oftentimes associated with homosexuality towards the late Victorian era with well known dandies like Oscar Wilde and Robert de Montesquiou. This really short discussion will focus more on the prevalence of the movement across both regency and contemporary aesthetics .

The Regency Dandy is oftentimes associated with the practise of a masculine femininity or androgyny, an obsession with vanity that could rival y2k's metrosexuality.

You might think of iconography like this bastardised mimicry of aristocracy, perfect tailoring and an attitude so arrogant he aims to astonish and to stand out. He exists in defiance, an 'aesthetic form of nihilism centring the self as the world', as coined by Jean Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation, 1981). This kind of aestheticism caught behind the act of rejection is thought to have fizzled out as the industrial revolution conquered Europe, yet looking- not even closely, looking broadly across western society dandyism as a sociology and artistic aesthetic appears to ebb and flow, constantly circulating through our society.

As we know, the traditional dandy aimed upwards- he was a common man acting in the place of an aristocrat- perhaps better described as acting above an aristocrat, or above society. He wore neatly pressed coats of dark blue, always found himself powdered and perfumed and inserted himself into the circles of the elite yet never becoming one himself. Their defiance of the social norm lead to innovations in fashion in cultivating an appearance that was astonishing yet elegant, daring yet enjoyable- distressed clothing.

Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly's biography of the iconic British dandy George 'Beau' Brummell reveals that its likely that Brummell and his circle often distressed their clothes using a kind of glasspaper- "they had their clothes distressed before they put them on, all over the cloth, to the point where it was no more than a sort of lace- a cloud."

The distress of clothing has always been an integral part of the way in which we experience personal fashions and aestheticism- purposeful wearing on denims in- for example- punk and grunge movements of the 1970s acted in the same way that the distressing of fine fabrics did for the British dandies, only in the opposite direction.

This new dandyism, the act of a defiant vanity, has shifted to push the wearer into commonality instead of aristocracy whilst maintaining that integral obsession with visual appearance and capitalistic tendencies of the ideology. Designer apparel mocks the common man- for example, denims are constructed and designed to allude to the agriculturalists of early twentieth century America with wearing, discolouration, rips, frays and tears etc but are only available to those who have no need to labour. Clothing is purposefully designed to look worn in, think of the controversial 'destroyed' shoes designed by Balenciaga in 2022. The purpose of garments like these is to give the impression of commonality whilst distancing themselves from the experience- they have the ability to give the impression that they are like you whilst maintaining a materialistic capitalistic mindset that allows them to feel above the society they suggest to be living in.

The contemporary dandy is ironic, they are conscious of their clothing, elegantly dressed and massed produced. They act towards the creation of an illusion of individualisation. Where dandies like Brummell sought influence over a handful of people within the aristocratic realm, the modernisation and mass production of the contemporary dandy aims to set precedent over millions.

This illusion of commonality adorned by the pop star, the influencer, the celebrity creates a sense of kinship and relatability for those 'beneath' them (for lack of better term) that allows them to maintain an extremely particular fascination over their vanity and a nihilistic facade of humility that allows them to set trends mimicked by millions. They are their world centre, living and dying before the mirror unable to keep up with the consumer imperative, reinventing themselves constantly to maintain their idolatry.

Of course, the artistic dandy still lives today. The celebrity that rejoices in an androgynous yet fluid vanity neither fully masculine nor feminine. Think Tilda Swinton, Grace Jones. Hell, I'm sure an argument can be made for acts such as Harry Styles and Måneskin as practises of gender neutral fashions and specific vanities become more prevalent once again in celebrity spaces . No, Elton John is not a dandy. He's camp.

[shikantazaart]

"Lucky" by NFT Murder

Introduction: In the constantly evolving realm of contemporary digital art, the piece titled "Lucky" by the avant-garde artist known as "NFT Murder" emerges as a distinctive commentary on cultural iconography and post-modern aesthetics.

Composition and Color: At first glance, "Lucky" captivates the viewer with its bold use of contrasting colors. The vibrant hues of green juxtaposed against the burnt orange background not only catch the eye but create an almost ethereal ambiance that seems to oscillate between the surreal and the tangible. NFT Murder's deliberate choice to incorporate neon shades rekindles memories of 80s and 90s pop culture, evoking a sense of nostalgia.

The main character, presumably "Lucky" the cat, dominates the center of the canvas, strategically placed to anchor the viewer's gaze. This is further complemented by the recurring motifs of spectral figures and eerie apparitions which orbit around the feline protagonist.

Symbolism: "Lucky", marked by its crossed-out eyes, is both whimsical and mysterious. This duality, combined with the symbols of bats and ghostly creatures, exudes an aura of mysticism and perhaps a hint towards the ephemeral nature of luck itself. The presence of the word "Lucky" emblazoned atop the cat's hat serves as a poignant reminder of the work's central theme and raises questions about the very nature of fortune in today's fragmented world.

The skull, another prominent motif, may signify the transient nature of life, while its playful rendering contradicts the traditional macabre association, suggesting that there's beauty to be found even in the darker facets of existence.

Technique: NFT Murder showcases an adept mastery over digital techniques. The textures, especially evident in the strokes that outline the figures, exhibit a raw, almost graffiti-like quality. This could be seen as a nod to street art and its inherent counter-cultural ethos, reinforcing the artist's position on the fringes of mainstream acceptance.

Conclusion: "Lucky" by NFT Murder is a testament to the artist's ability to meld traditional symbols with modern digital techniques to produce a work that resonates on multiple levels. It's a celebration of the past, a commentary on the present, and a prophecy of a future where digital art blurs the boundaries of what's real and what's imagined. In its entirety, "Lucky" stands as a vibrant beacon in the ever-expanding universe of digital artistry, beckoning viewers to both reminisce and reimagine.

This piece is currently on show in the Shikantaza Secrets 001 Exhibition, details can be found here:

[panicinthestudio]

Buddha statue in schist, 3rd-4th century

Ancient Gandhara

Schist

147.5 cm (58 1/8 in.) high

Supporting numerous publications on the art of ancient Gandhara, Claude de Marteau was perhaps best known for his expertise in Gandharan sculpture. His connoisseurship is epitomized by this almost life-size statue of the Buddha, which excels for its naturalism, grace, and contemplative attitude.

The ancient region of Gandhara, which spanned modern-day northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, was home to a vibrant, cosmopolitan civilization situated at the crossroads of international trade networks linking South Asia, Central Asia, China, and the Mediterranean. Because of its verdant terrain and lucrative trade position, the region fell repeatedly to foreign raids and invaders. The Kushans, originally from Central Asia and already having incorporated elements of Greek culture, established themselves in Gandhara in the early first century CE. Under the Kushan ruler Kanishka (127-151 CE), Gandharan Buddhist art and architecture flourished, resulting in the creation of some of the earliest iconic images of the historical Buddha, such as the present statue.

Indicative of Gandharan art's appealing multiculturalism, the stone carver who created the present image of the Buddha was clearly as well-versed in Buddhist iconography as he was in the Greco-Roman aesthetic tradition of naturalism. He succeeds in realistically modelling the figure's stance with a gentle, understated contrapposto, lightly bending the right knee and placing more weight on the left leg—imbuing movement within his creation. He effortlessly conveys the Buddha's supple physique, suggested under the sweeping pleats of his heavy monastic robe. To this, the sculptor has added certain physiological features, rooted in Indic religions, that distinguish an enlightened being (mahalakshana). A raised circular dot in the middle of his brow represents his urna, from which in many sutras, the Buddha emits a ray of light to illuminate distant worlds. Crisp, wavy locks are pulled over an ushnisha, a cranial protuberance endowed with a variety of magical powers. Another prominent symbol of his enlightened consciousness is the large halo backing his head and shoulders. But perhaps most profound is the arresting quietude evoked by his heart-shaped, mustachioed visage, whose heavy-lidded downward expression conveys a solemn detachment from the world.

The present sculpture's torso and stance are portrayed with a higher degree of naturalism than a representative example in the British Museum (1947,0511.1). The soft treatment of the robes compares well with Gandharan sculptures of the Buddha held in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (F.1975.04.2.S), and sold at Christie's, New York, 21 March 2008, lot 527. A Gandharan Buddha with a similar cordate facial type is in the Tokyo National Museum (C0097675). Depicting Maitreya, the Future Buddha, venerated in the pedestal below Shakyamuni's feet, the present sculpture belongs to an iconic trope in Gandharan art also represented by a Buddha in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014.188), and reflected in examples sold at Christie's, New York, 25 March 2004, lot 18, and Bonhams, Hong Kong, 2 December 2021, lot 1036.

Bonhams

[art-seer]

Recent works by Shahanshah Mittal

Shrikant Vishwakarma provides insight into the recent works of artist Shahanshah Mittal.

Every generation evolves by unraveling pre-existing paradigms to create their own realms. This perennial phenomenon is driven by an ambition of exploring pure realizations of the truth of our existence. In visual art, abstraction connects one to the paths of awakenings through a meditative understandings of every aspect of our living beyond received and decipherable grids of languages, signs, iconographies – both textual and visual. Our cosmos is, as we perceive it, intentionally and unintentionally, formed by structures that surround us. Unknown and visceral, abstraction acquires momentous space with a sense of immense tranquility treading new paths of aesthetic experience.

Shahanshah delves into this spiritual experience by withdrawing from the use of pigments or representative forms and motifs. The vocabulary of visuals does not create a literal meaning, it is poetic, urging one to find colors and reach the blankness of spiritual actuality, constructing and deconstructing meaning in various spaces and time. The collages are steps of realizations, beyond the meanings that we create. The artist carves out his memoirs with layers of paper overlapping each other.

The recent works are the expression of the artist’s need for abstraction as he questions the epistemology of rationality. It is an ode to an other-worldly pilgrimage through submerged planes - it coaxes one to introspect and perhaps, transcend dimensions. As Paul Klee says, ‘Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible’ what commonly is not seen.

-Shrikant Vishwakarma

[solisvidentis]

>Some have, some have taken a different approach. You'd be surprised how having so much free time lends itself to focusing on cultivating one's image. He has a feeling that Rose would understand this perfectly... given how well she handles her... clones? Apparitions? Duplicates? Help him out here Rose, he may be trying to be ever so slightly smug here, but heaven forbid he gets the dialect wrong.

>Ah well, thats much easier to explain: Compromise and experimentation. You know, as much as they adore their iconography, everyone felt it best to mix things up a little. Include a color that represents the both of them. So they did a little research, ran some tests, and this is what they tried: the combo of silver and pink gold! He does have to note however, that the image he showed them is rather old, and they have since removed the latter from the palette. A shame too; the populace really digged the new look. But sadly, its inclusion had attracted fish.

>Really angry, gold addicted fish.

"Surrogates, or even puppets would do fine. They're just atoms being jerked around by magic - most of the time I don't even make them flesh- marble is simpler, and has such a nice aesthetic... Though you'll find they're just replicas of my own appearance prior to this. The only thing I cultivate is my waistline, though perhaps I'm not alone" she, lips curled into a smirk

"It's amazing how widespread of an issue that can be... I've had to throw out fish snooping around my universe myself on at least two occasions- such a nuisance.

But, the silver is rather nice too; more understated and refined even."

[feliciagarrivan]

In-Depth: Examining The Female Gaze 

The debate around the terms Male Gaze and Female Gaze is a contentious one. The first has been dissected many times and has a clear connotation: Sexual objectification of the female body throught the visual art. The second is more difficult to define.

Art history is full of sexual references if you know where to look. In the Ecstasy of St. Teresa by Lorenzo Bernini for example, her face depicts the female climax. Sure, it is well hidden under the justification that she “sees God”; don't we all at the end? 

So why is it so difficult to identify and describe the female gaze? The way desire and pleasure is shown is key. These aspects have always marked a considerable part of what makes the male gaze so powerful.

For the sake of this article let's consider the female gaze in relation to photography. From a photoshoot, the dynamic shown in the final images represents part of the relationship between photographer and subject. The patterns of visualising femininity cannot be broken by simply letting a female photographer control the camera.

The poses and intentions portrayed are often influenced by the history of visual art and ancient iconography, and therefore understood to be projections of desire. The female gaze does not have equal references. 

The stereotypical definition that the female gaze is delicate and tender is still based on the notion that the work is posed and directed with a man-dominated audience in mind, depriving the photographer of an aesthetic of her own. 

It seems that there is a very low percentage of photographers who portray heterosexual males in a sexualized manner. Perhaps because there is less history in the visual art that express what is sexual desire for woman. Even though times are changing, it is still at a very early stage compared to the overwhelming amount of material that we have on the opposite side.

Photo courtesy of © Megan Magdalena

In her work Boys Boys Boys , the artist Megan Magdalena, creates an intense series of portraits of her male friends. Frustrated by the censorship that was inflicted on her female portraits on social media, she decided to have male posing in the same fashion as her female models. The images are accompanied by a Q&A conducted with each person reviewing their experience.

The majority of them had a feeling of empowerment and did not feel uncomfortable during the photo shooting. However the visual language expressed by the poses is built on an underlying meaning that we all recognize beyond the verbal language barrier. It makes us think, with more equal representation, will it ever succeed in the mission of subverting from seductive to simply powerful? And If we can't change the rules, are we willing to write new ones?

The idea of defining a female way to describe what is sexually appealing, what is sexual tension and send a renewed message, is exiting. What sexy is does not have to be one thing. With Female Gaze we are opening the conversation to more topics, to more body types, to more sexual likings, and to more meanings.

Photo courtesy of © Chloe Sheppard

Photographer Chloe Sheppard has been shaking up the world of editorial photography since 2012. The British artist has been described as soft and dreamy in her style. Perhaps her work, influenced by the 60s and 70s aesthetics and colors, compared to the 90s cold blue tones, can be a way to interpret her work. It's the artist's personal taste and the ideas that flourish in the final images shouldn't be associated with gender.

Adolescence is a recurrent theme in her images. Glimpses of afternoons spent in a teenage room or wandering around with friends. But her work is not only made of ephemeral lightheartedness. She rewrites the beauty standards in terms of seduction and allure. In her latest work made of collages, self portraits and poems, she addresses the theme of identity through her photographic work.

We could argue that the female gaze is different in every aspect of photography. In journalism, in fine art, in event coverage, and so on, for every genre of visual creativity, each of us will bring their personal approach. Why is it so difficult to accept that a female or queer artist will be different? Acknowledging our differences and establishing our equality can only enrich the melting pot of visual languages.

From the moment that we start to think about a project there is a decision making process. Are they indoor or outdoor? Are they fully dressed or are they naked? Is it in color or black and white? What do I want to say with these pictures? You as a photographer have a direct impact from the moment you conceive an idea. 

Ultimately the female gaze wants to re-appropriate female narratives, perhaps not limiting this conversation only to our bodies, and include a more complex and nuanced vision. We have been confined for so long in a male definition of what we should be, that to free ourselves, seems to be difficult and we can't unanimously agree.

Disagreement and discussion are welcome in a healthy society that wants to grow and expand. Acceptance is about acknowledging the presence of others and the freedom to let them express themselves.

[flagellant]

After The Revolution Will Never Come

An examination on the realpolitik of revolutionary movements and the perpetuation of the iconography of violence. Originally written for my university final paper. 2,500 words.

-

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains”.

There is an inherent seductiveness to being justified in your actions. To know without any doubt that you were right; that whatever path you chose was the correct path to take, now and into the future. It makes a world of complicated loose-ends and shades of gray into a perfect aesthetic of simplistic moral values. If you were correct, then it necessitates that something else was wrong; if your side is the right side, then whatever actions you took must also have been right. This is not to assign blame; life is a confusing tangle of messy and ugly truths intertwined with deceptions, many of which happen at the same time, or are even the same thing. To crave the shelter of simplicity, to want to feel the certainty that your idea of your own righteousness cannot be challenged, is perhaps one of the most honest parts of human nature.

Yet while this is an understandable instinct, it is not a good one. Jim Butcher elaborated on a fairly well-known idea of actions only justifiable by ourselves in his quote, “No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially - those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.” 

My fear, however, does not come from the justifications that others do not give our actions. Instead I am more afraid of the normalization of violence that we can accept so long as those around us accept that violence. To be beyond reproach requires a community which believes that to be true of your character; inversely, to be irredeemable and monstrous is not something we choose to see for ourselves, but rather that we judge in how we see others. For Americans, I cannot claim to know the source, but I am certain of its consequences, when I look back even throughout my own short lifetime at the popularization of antiblackness, antisemitism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. Each of these philosophies are predicated on the understanding that an outside group is to blame for the violence being done against them, that there is a shared, unilateral complicity in corrupting evil which must somehow be vanquished. 

I think often about the potency of symbols and iconography within the human psyche. Simple images which, through some miracle, have become more than what they could ever otherwise be. Icons are sanctuaries, places of holiness, of veneration. They cease to be mere images and become a representation of philosophies, ideals, and concepts, empowering whatever they represent like a focusing prism might strengthen the light and heat of a ray of sun to set a fire from a single perfect point. Meaning is found in the most illogical of things, but that does not reduce the fact that we find meaning in them nonetheless. So I find it concerning to witness within the modern American politics of the radical leftist revolutionaries what seems to be an unconscious commitment to perpetuation of the iconography of violence.

    Consider the guillotine. There have been countless stories of its legend, its grim history attached to the shining blade. Its inventor was the Doctor Guillotin, who sought to create a more humane method of murder ordered by a ruling class of citizens–at the time, there were the options of a headsman or a gallows, both of which caused, ostensibly, too much cruelty in the ending of human lives by human hands. I do not believe that Guillotin would have envisioned the legacy of bloodshed he would allow, but I do not believe that anyone ever expected the bloodlust of the French Revolution to reach such awful heights.

    They were awful, without a doubt. Over the course of less than a year more than fifteen thousand people were executed via the guillotine, with another twenty-five thousand being executed through other means. Looking not back to the words of the past, but instead to the philosophies of the present, I believe that the guillotine captures something in our imaginations like no other method of execution ever has. It is a clean, simple, perfected machine, tall and central in wherever it sits, confrontational in its exact function. The great equalizer of all men, Madame Guillotine, for we are all comrades in that we are mortal. And, of course, it is a more humane way to separate men’s ghosts from their bodies. 

    It is this concept more than any that I think is why the modern revolution’s iconography exists so strongly within the grip of the falling blade. We seek to understand ourselves not as murderers or tyrants, but as merciful victors, somber in our need to enforce justice and rules, refusing to relish the idea of suffering even if there is simply no other course but to kill. To torture, maim, and cause as much agony as possible for our personal delights would be truly ghoulish, unacceptable, and prove that we of course are no better than what we defeated. It is a very Romantic means of death; there is spectacle, but there is brevity. There is poetry to the righteousness of an impartial Sword of Damocles, yet we do not stoop to sully our community’s hearts with needless pain.

    All of this is a lie. There is no community worth anything which seeks to root its foundations in the efficiency of ending human life. To kill another person as painlessly as possible due to perceived moral necessity is not a mercy, because it by nature must justify the action of murder. Morality ceases to be a function when the legalization of the taking of another’s life is the source of it.

    But still, I cannot pretend I do not understand, or even that I do not want to agree, with many of my fellow anarchists. I see the symptoms of a system of government and commerce which has, with no metaphor or allusion, encouraged the permittance of treating human life as a resource to be extracted for profit. I see private citizens funding with personal billions upon billions of dollars the violent usurpation of a foreign nation to prevent their trillion-dollar businesses from being slightly less of a trillion-dollar business. I see leaders of our country witness the countless murders of black men, women, and children, and call for the communities of the dead to control their anger, instead of controlling the killers that remain unpunished or even become celebrated for the ultimate miscarriage of justice, that which ends in the destruction of human beings. I see my planet not even being granted a slow and limping fading-away as it is instead accelerated to apocalyptic levels of death due to the refusal of sacrificing profit for survival. How could I not understand the need for a means to prove to the kings of our kind that they, too, shall die–and by the hands of those they would continue killing, if need be?

    Unrest has moved through our world and nation not as a wildfire has, clean and purifying, but as a plague which infects and sickens the hearts, minds, and souls of us and what we make. Our bitter fury at our own powerlessness to prevent harm being done festers and rots like mold in the pit of a peach, capable of killing everything sweet in the world as it lay just beneath the skin. There is a logic to why the guillotine has become such a potent symbol of change, but I do not want to admit that there is a justification for perpetuating that symbol. To venerate and lionize a means of murder and execution ordered by those in power is, I worry, not just to continue a cycle of violence and the reinvention of structures of suffering we live under now. I worry that, at its very core, it encourages an inability to think of any hope for change that does not glorify death and destruction. Perhaps every act of creation necessitates destruction; perhaps a violent upheaval in the loosing of shackles is inevitable for the future of humanity. Certainly it is difficult to envision a reality of realpolitik that does not begin and end with human death at human hands.

    But just because it is difficult, or perhaps even impossible, does not mean that we should not shy away from the iconography of violence-as-politics, of murder-bringing-change. I think there is very little in our government and systemic structures that is worth salvaging, truly, but I think of something other than headless corpses piled in the city square when I try and imagine a better world.

    Fire has always been an icon in human history; it predates history, and even predates humans. It is destructive, but its destruction is a purification and cleansing. Nothing remains but ash and charcoal, but because nothing remains, it means that you are free to take an entirely new path, with nothing in the past to shackle you. It appears in Creation myths as both creator and destroyer; the conflagrating Shiva, Lord of the Dance; the father of humanity, Prometheus, stealing flames to gift to the first cold and lonely humans instead of being hoarded by selfish Zeus; Coyote climbs the mountains of the sky to take for us fire from the giants, and now the tip of his tail is burnt black from it forever. It appears in the supernatural as divinatory and healing; the Oracle of Delphi inhaling the burning fumes of the gods; the priests of God lighting candles to exorcise demons; the tarot traditionally depicts The Tower, or The House of God, as lightning-struck and aflame, an omen of cataclysmic destruction and overwhelming catastrophic change. Wherever we look, we see fire and fear it as much as we love it, for it is the flames that both grant us life and warmth and kills all it touches with the same breath.

    If we must move away from the perpetuation of violence in revolutionary iconography, I must respect the power of iconography at all. Power abhors a vacuum, and propaganda as a rallying cry is an eminent source of empowerment and strength for our convictions. I think of the wildfires of California, and the chaparral which must be burnt to cinders requires to grow and stay healthy as an ecological biome. Entire ecosystems have evolved with the understanding of their end by flame inevitable, and have tied their births to the ashes that are left behind. It is not in the homeland of my tribe that I see a possible replacement for the guillotine–there is no real romance in a pinecone–but I find it elsewhere.

    There is a part of the Cape of Africa called the fynbos, or fine bush. It is a region of land where more than four in five plants are endemic to nowhere else except that miniscule hundred kilometer band. Fires rampage through it every decade or so, eradicating the lush beauty of the hills bright with flowers, each trying to attract the pollination of the sunbirds which live in the region and feed off of their nectar.

    It is in the ashes and smoke of a wildfire which has left nothing of the old world that I find what symbol I see myself in. Four days after the conflagration, a single flower will have bloomed; the Cyrtanthus ventricosus, commonly named as the fire lily. These plants bloom only after the soil their bulbs live in are exposed to extreme temperatures; they are exclusively pollinated by a single species of butterfly; within two weeks, the flowers will have died as the rest of the fynbos explodes back into vegetation, and it goes dormant once more as a bulb, waiting for the next fire to come, as I suppose it must know it always will.

    I want to be clear: I do not see this as an appropriate symbol because of the idea that it represents the hope of a future where justice has won. I think that the lie of victory over oppression is perhaps the greatest danger we face as Americans; we are too easily comforted by the idea that the fight for civil rights and humanity can exist in the past, definitively beaten, or only ever in the smallest dregs, never truly a threat anymore. The idea of history being something we create, as opposed to something which does not apply to us, is not seductive as righteousness is, but rather a terrified grip onto complacency: If we live in times where injustice must be fought, then that means if we are not fighting injustice, we are why it must be fought. The fire lily, on the surface, lives only after the revolution of fire. It is perhaps to others a sign of beauty, perhaps of hope, that life shall exist even after the most calamitous of change.

    To me it is the knowledge that the fire lily did not come to life after the fire–justice does not live only once injustice is defeated. The fire lily is a lily. It is a plant which grows from the same bulb, flowering again and again, withering away each time and waiting for its moment to bloom. It is never dead, it may only be killed; otherwise, it is still there, just below the surface of the soil, unseen and ignored by many, but exists within the foundations of the world nonetheless.

    The point in time where any of us will ever be able to say, “This is after the revolution”, will never come. The fight against human cruelty, against murder and violence in all its sizes and shapes and justifiications, against conflict and struggle and suffering–it is never something able to be won. We exist in a constant state of learning more about our fellow man, and our ideas of justice grow with each new thing we learn. To be alive is to change into something other than what you were mere moments ago; to be dead is definitionally to stagnate, unable to change yourself, merely to be changed by those around you. The fire lily did not grow after the revolution, it merely was most visible then. Fire happens when we grow rampant and green and far too comfortable with the idea of forgetting that, just like justice exists within the foundations of our societies, so too does injustice, waiting to strike. The only difference between the fire and the flower in this system of symbology, then, is merely what symbols we see in them, and what we are willing to do about it.

[noknowshame]

The Aesthetic Symbolism of Pirate Flags: An Essay

Last year for a course I took called "Anthropology of Art and Aesthetics". For our final, based on class readings we had to write an essay about the symbolic value of an object of our choosing. For obvious reasons I wrote it about pirate flags.

It never occurred to me before to post it here because it's... a lot, but (if I do say so myself) despite its density it covers some cool ideas about art theory, history, and queer interpretations of piracy.

(it's also full of a ton of academically-veiled Black Sails references)

A skull and crossed swords on a field of black. Two flags bear this identical iconography: one in 1717, hanging from the topmast of a ship and fluttering gently in the winds of the West Indies, the other in 2021, hanging tapestry-like on the wall of my bedroom, billowing in the artificial breeze of air conditioning. It is time, rather than objective imagery, that separate these two objects. When removed from their original intended contexts, artifacts like my pirate flag can often come across as absurd – if not directly insulting – in reference to those contexts. How bizarre would it seem to a resident of the early 18th century that an object associated with violent criminals is not only positively regarded three hundred years later, but is a wildly popular decorative commodity rarely considered with any gravity? As infantile as their modern use appears at a surface level, from an aesthetic and anthropological perspective, the symbolic significance of these flags has changed (and remained the same) in ways that make the transition to their current interpretation perfectly sensible. The endurance of the pirate flag both historically and contemporarily is the result of its role as a performative, instrumental form of art that ultimately speaks for itself.

What is art? This, of course, is not a new question, and it is inherently one that cannot be answered with any solid definition. Perhaps, then, an art object is not something that can be identified with a statement, but instead something that captivates through prompting further questions. Alfred Gell homes in on a specific question to view art with, that being “how did this thing get to be here?” (67) Looking up at the flag on my wall, it’s a deceivingly simplistic question to answer at first. It is here because I bought it. I wished to have one, so I searched online among hundreds of pirate flags available, chose the one I preferred, and had it shipped to my apartment (notably, without any fear of its mode of transportation coming under attack). However, the supply chain involved in producing, delivering, and receiving it is neither the whole story nor the point I am attempting to make. To truly answer, “how did this thing get to be here?” (and whether or not pirate flags are art), we have to dive deeper. Why exactly is this something I desired to encounter? What does it represent, and what did it?

In the 1700s when these flags were in active use, encountering one was a much less innocent form of encounter. Their purpose was to provoke victims of piracy into asking themselves the very same question, “how did this thing get to be here?”, but with a distinct intention in mind: to make them fear the answer. This assumed answer was that the flag existed because the men it belonged to had abandoned civilization. Therefore, they were no longer beholden to the moral principles or laws that prevented them from being a mortal threat. After all, pirates were already legally considered hostis humani generis: enemies of all mankind, so if merchant sailors attempted to flee or fight, what reason did they have to show mercy? Naturally, nothing this complex was going through a sailor’s mind. Through memento mori symbols of death-heads, bones, swords, hourglasses, bleeding hearts, and more, no elaboration was necessary – it was abundantly clear what the flags meant. Death. In this way, they functioned as visual intimidation (much like the prow-boards of ceremonial boats in the Trobriand Islands). They could also be interpreted as a form of psychological trap. Of course, the flags were not dangerous themselves at all, being nothing more than a piece of cloth. But the anticipation of violence that that cloth conveyed was quite effective. As Gell puts it, this is because “a trap, by its very nature, is a transformed representation of its maker, the hunter, and the prey animal, its victim, and of their mutual relationship.” (203) If the flag did not clearly convey the relationship intended between the pirates and their particular kind of prey, there would be little to discuss.

Gell uses his interpretation of traps to argue that they are, in fact, art. “I would define as a candidate artwork any object or performance that potentially rewards such scrutiny because it embodies intentionalities that are complex, demanding of attention and perhaps difficult to reconstruct fully” (211) Pirate flags fulfill all of these criteria, particularly when you realize just how performative their actions generally were. Pirates would not have their reputation if there wasn’t any truth to their violent tendencies, but generally speaking, it was in their best interest to avoid confrontation if possible. The risk of potential damage to their ships and crewman was simply not economical when sheer intimidation worked equally well. Just as in Francis Bacon’s paintings “the horror is multiplied because it is inferred from the scream, and not the reverse” (Deluze 38), a pirate flag is most effective due to the inference of death rather than actual death. To their victims the flags signaled impending doom, but more often than not that fear was what ironically prevented the threat from having to be fulfilled in the first place. It is a symbol caught in the precarious balance between war and peace.

Entrapment, however, is not the only way that pirate flags were complex symbolic objects. Their art served other nuanced purposes that likely have more to do with their contemporary significance. So far, we have already discussed how they created a functional division not dissimilar to predator and prey, and how that was taken advantage of strategically. However, for the pirates themselves, the flags did the precise opposite: it unified.

First and foremost, all flags are pieces of socially functional art, that serve both to unify those it includes and display that unification to those it excludes. Oftentimes, the specific iconography displayed is also embedded with meaning relevant to the in-group, thus serving a narrative function that further reinforces the idea of shared cultural identity. As touched on, pirates in the 18th century were hostis humani generis. Regardless of the highly varied reasons they came into their lives of crime, once they committed an act of piracy, there was no returning to a civilization that now would only promise them a noose. This visceral and severe Othering necessitated a sense of belonging be re-created. The flags as art fostered this quite well. They were a tangible object that could embody and animate the worlds the pirates envisioned for themselves: a new microcosm of nationality. What made pirate flags particularly effective was their dual nature. Generally, the specific iconography was distinct for the ships of different captains, but they all shared similar enough motifs to still be perceived as a unified front. As grand as the scale of piracy appears in retrospect, in reality most of them operated during the same few years and knew each other personally. The intimacy of what the flags represented was no lie. They were a tight-knit culture made up of the Othered– a nation of thieves, and it was this that made the flags an effective threat. What, after all, could frighten civilization more than the very people they alienated deciding they ought to organize?

That fear of the unified Other is one that has repeated throughout history, and it is precisely why pirate flags have survived the test of time. When the world is indifferent to you at best and antagonistic to you at worst, the fantasy of being perceived as a threat ­ ­– rather than a victim – is a powerful one. This makes pirate flags a form of “minor art”, as much today if not more than they were initially. To an extent they are situated in reality, but they also represent a “sense of worlds that exist ‘somewhere out there’” (Silvio 61), where oppression can be actively fought, and Otherness is a force of empowerment rather than isolation. This is demonstrated in one demographic that has especially come to embrace symbols of piracy: the queer community, of which I myself am a member. Although under very different circumstances, for much of western history queer people have been criminalized in ways surprisingly comparable to pirates. To exist meant to be dehumanized, and to be caught meant death. It is no wonder then that the stories of pirates appeal to members of these communities. This association is amplified by the fact that historically pirates often were queer. This is in a literal sense, but more importantly, in a broader sense of “queer” in terms of subversive diversity. On largely egalitarian and democratic pirate ships, crewmen were considered equals regardless of their backgrounds, unheard of in the monarchical cultures they left behind that valued heredity and rank. Additionally, since they had already been rejected by society, there was no need to hold to its strict standards in mannerisms, dress, or interpersonal conduct. Much like the rainbow flag is a symbol of pride, joy, and rejection of despair, pirate flags represent freedom, self-expression, and a warning to those who would attempt to stifle it.

In the same way that pirate flags were functional, this diversity was also functional. In reference to the history of Taiwan (which itself started off as a pirate haven), Teri Silvio posits this: "When you’re trying to survive, how can you not be utilitarian?" (111). This is to say, when you as an outsider do not have access to the resources provided by civilization, it makes no sense at all to create even more outsiders through exclusion. Diversity, therefore, emerges as a form of necessary practicality. In modern contexts, practical diversity is why “queer” is such an all-encompassing word. The moral panic of the “the mid 20th century and increasing gay rights activism began largely as a result of people of different identities realizing, just like the pirates did, how impactful they could be if they decided to work together– under a unifying flag. This is because oppression at its core functions through individuation. Civilization as-it-is prospers through preventing “minor” groups from realizing their collective power, or breaking that collective power once it is realized. The acceptance of queer identities in recent years is the result of society’s failure to do so (although not for lack of trying). Pirates, on the other hand, were not so successful historically. Ironically, the Golden Age of Piracy ended not by killing the pirates, but by pardoning them. This was a very deliberate effort on the part of the British Empire to divide the pirates’ unified self-image by offering the opportunity to revoke their Otherness. Once their diversity and unifying alienation could no longer serve as a stable foundation, their flags could not hold them together. From there, the end was inevitable.

The cliché phrase that “history is written by the victors” is not always true. In the short-term the pirates may have lost their battle against civilization, but in the long-term there is no doubt whatsoever that they won. Three centuries later pirates hold such an unwavering place in the collective unconscious that there was no need for me to even introduce them at the beginning of this essay. They are a beloved archetype, and all over the world people like me fly their flags as a source of inspiration. The unification that was lost is regained elsewhere. One could take issue with the way that pirates are romantically mythologized today given they were essentially the 18th century equivalents of gangs and terrorist; however, their mythology was in formation from the first moments those flags were raised. This is something I believe many of the pirates were well-aware of. Art is what survives, what remains visible, and it is often more powerful than any direct reality it represents. While their flags may have been unable to continue their literal, practical roles in the performance of piracy, they endure because of their role as icons deeply embedded with the narrative of Otherness. They can thus become the instruments for any group that wishes to be personally addressed in their particular way. They tell you: do not fear being cast into the shadows– you should be the one that is feared. There is freedom in the dark, and one day, in a faraway time and place you will never know, you will not be the villain in this story. You will be celebrated.

So, why is this flag hanging on my wall? How did this thing get to be here? It remains because – despite such depths of history and myth and meaning – in the end, it is simply self-evident.

--------------

Works Cited

Deleuze, Gilles, and Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Portmanteau Press, 1992.

Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Clarendon Press, 2007.

Silvio, Teri. Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan. University of Hawai’i Press, 2019.

Facilitated by a somewhat absurd accumulated knowledge of early 18th century piracy.

[blueiscoool]

2,000-Year-Old Ancient Funerary Complex and Dog Head Statue Found in Rome

Excavations in Rome have uncovered an ancient burial complex that held an intact ceramic funerary urn containing bone fragments and a terracotta dog's head statue.

Archaeologists were called in after workers laying pipes for utility firm Acea on the Via Luigi Tosti in the city's Appio Latino quarter came across the buried tombs.

They would have once lined the Via Latina (literally, the 'Latin Road') which was one of the earliest-lain Roman roads and that runs south-east out from the old city walls.

Adjacent to the tombs, the team's excavations also uncovered the remains of a young man who appeared to have been buried in the bare earth.

According to the experts, the canine bust — small enough to fit in the palm of a hand — resembles decorative parts of drainage systems used on sloping rooms.

However, the little dog statue appears to have lost its drain hole, or perhaps never even had one and was fashioned for purely aesthetic purposes.

Dog experts at the RSPCA said that it was 'tricky' to identify the type of dog as, given the nature of the sculpture, there was no sense of scale.

'It could be representative of a large breed or a small, toy breed,' a spokesperson said, noting that dog breeds have also changed significantly over the last two millennia.

'During the Roman period there was selective breeding of dogs for desirable qualities and for specific functions, such as hunting, guarding, companions etc,' they added.

The Romans kept dogs as both pets and to guard property and livestock, with one popular breed being the Molossian hound, which came from ancient Greece.

Historians believe that they also kept dogs that would have been similar in appearance to to modern Irish wolfhounds, greyhounds, lurchers, Maltese and more.

The archaeologists believe that the structures making up the funerary complex were constructed between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD.

'The discovery casts new light on an important context,' said Rome's special superintendent, Daniel Porro, the Times have reported.

'Once again, Rome shows important traces of the past throughout its urban fabric.'

The three tombs were found at a depth of roughly 1.6 feet (0.5 metres) below the surface of the present-day street.

Unfortunately, the archaeologists reported, the structures appeared to have been damaged by previous underground utility works, carried out in the area prior to the introduction of policies designed to protect the city's heritage.

All three of the tombs were built on a concrete base.

One had walls made of a yellow tuff, the second had a reticulated, net-like, composition, while the remains of the third were confined to just a base which showed signs of fire damage.

The experts said that, alongside the terracotta dog's head, they also uncovered a large number of fragments of coloured plaster.

The funerary complex, they added, appears to have been built using the front of an abandoned pozzolana quarry, as is evidenced by the characteristic cuts made into the bank of tuff (a rock made of volcanic ash) on which it appears to have stood.

Pozzolan was the name given to material of a volcanic origin that the Romans used as a key ingredient alongside lime to manufacture cement.

According to experts, only around a tenth of Rome has ever been excavated, and the capital's 2,800-year-long history of occupation has meant that much of its past has become buried beneath successive layers of construction and the modern city.

The new dig site on the Via Luigi Tosti is close to the Ipogeo di Via Dino Compagni — an underground tomb, or 'hypogeum', that was first discovered in 1954.

This structure — which, based on the stunning frescos within, has been dated to around 320–350 AD — would have been used for private burials.

The hypogeum is notable for containing a mixture of religious iconography, reflecting how some of its interred appeared to have converted to Christianity while other still adhered to worshipping pagan gods.

[battleangelaelita]

Worldbuilding in Cinder, Part 1

I figured I’d give some insights to my worldbuilding choices in my fanfic Cinder for the readers who’ve been following me here on tumblr. Unlike some of my past works, I’ve been trying hard to make the text itself stand on its own without the need for marginalia and notes to hold the reader’s hand. But nonetheless, this is always a fun subject for me to talk about.

Neither this blog nor the fic itself is meant as any sort of criticism of the worldbuilding in the canon show. For the most part, the setting changes I’ve made I’ve tried to either be just lore expansions from the original, or changes to fit the more mature tone of the fic. Because it’s ultimately in service to telling a compelling story.

The Fire Nation

This is probably where I’ve bucked the usual trends the most. Most fanon accentuates the parallels to between the Fire Nation and Japan, particularly the post-Meiji restoration Imperial Japan. There’s nothing wrong with this in itself, but I think there’s a danger in constructing a fantasy culture too closely to any one real world culture. Such depictions can easily fall into caricature, or pull the fantastic setting too close to real world and rob some of the magic of fantasy.

Instead, mostly for my own amusement I drew on the aesthetic connection to South Asian cultures from the show, drawing on India and Hinduism’s immense influence. I chose this because India has been an interest of mine since I was a teenager, so I already had a good knowledge base, and this gave me an impetus to read and learn more.

There’s a lot of disparate artistic influences portrayed in the art, clothing, architecture, food and culture of the Fire Nation. I think it’s fair to say, especially since the comics and the Kyoshi novels, they’ve probably had the most canonical interest, with a lot of cooks in that kitchen. Zuko is the fan-favorite, and as the primary antagonists of the original, so this was natural. In fleshing out the fictional history of the Fire Nation, a parallel to the Indo-Aryan migrations seemed a natural way to tie together that diversity.

As a quick aside, I must vent about my frustration with the 20th century’s most malicious case of cultural appropriation with regard to that word ‘Aryan’--the abuse of ancient Indian culture and symbols by 20th century Nazis has unfortunately made this a perilous exercise, and I have no choice but to write around it. The word ‘swastika’ itself comes from Sanskrit, meaning “conducive to well-being”, part of the very common iconography of sun wheels. ‘Aryan’ was an endonym shared among many peoples across ancient Iran and northern India, and connoted adherence to a shared set of values and way of life, having linguistic roots in words for nobility.

Unfortunately I can’t undo this plundering, nor can I just pretend it never happened, but limitations breed creativity. There’s an upcoming scene where after a hunt with some other young warriors of the Northern Water Tribe, Azula is asked to share a tale of her people, and wanting to use this to exposit on how the Fire Nation came to be a fusion of an Indian and a Japanese inspired culture, I ended up finding some interesting ways to adapt a thread from the Rigveda and Mahābhārata for her tale. And if you can guess what that is, you get a cookie.

This world-building has come to the fore most directly with religion. Hinduism’s deep influence on East Asian religion and culture is often overlooked, but through the expansion of Buddhism into the Sino-sphere, a large number of Hindu gods, cultural practices and values left their mark. Buddhist deities almost invariably correspond directly with a Hindu equivalent, and Buddhism’s influence was perhaps strongest in Japan, where syncretism between Buddhism and native Shinto is so thorough it is often impossible to separate the two traditions.

There’s an added bonus that a Sanskrit substrate also helps explain all the words and names in the Fire Nation that really don’t fit, most fittingly Azula and Azulon’s names. This, I must stress, is just my idle amusement, drawing an etymology through Sanskrit’s sister tongue of Old Persian, the ultimate source of words like ‘azure’/’azul’ in Europe, back into whatever language they speak in the present world of the Avatar.

Language

Another idle amusement I’ve found is how language works in the world of Avatar. And I think there being a dominant lingua franca that has displaced older languages makes a great deal of sense. Because there’s a pretty compelling figure that at least in theory ties all the nations together: the Avatar themself.

Chinese logograms are omnipresent in the show, from the title cards to diegetic text. This makes a great deal of sense. Hanzi in their purest form are pronunciation independent. They convey an idea directly, and so long as sender and receiver know what the symbol is supposed to mean, they can communicate.

This is important because the idea of a Chinese language is sort of a fiction even at present. Local dialects of Mandarin Chinese even now have the kind of variation you’d expect of a culture with 5,000 years of history, in spite of the long record of central governments trying to promote cultural homogeneity in China. These dialects of Mandarin (without even getting into the other Sinitic languages like Cantonese) have major pronunciation and grammatical differences, to the point where they can be as distinct from each other as the Romance languages are from each other or Latin.

Why is one a dialect and another a language? As Yiddish linguist Max Heinrich famously quipped, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”

The dominant Chinese language, Mandarin, gets its name not from any particular ethnic group or region in China, but from a class of functionaries who spoke and wrote it, the guān of Imperial China, who came to be known as mandarins in Europe through a game of linguistic telephone through the Malay language ultimately to to the Sanskrit mantri, meaning counselor or minister, and also sharing the same root as the word mantra. It’s that bureaucracy that kept China functioning as a single state, even as dynasties came and went, the country was conquered by foreign nomads multiple times.

To me, the most obvious reason why at the ‘present’ that the world speaks one language, whatever the local variations, is because its a project done by the Avatar over generations to promote balance in the world. Other languages exist and are even still spoken; the ancestral languages of the Northern and Southern Water Tribes hold deep cultural significance, to the point where in the North in particular it is still used in daily life. In the Fire Nation, the old tongue, a Sanskrit like language, is still a language of the privileged, used for literature, poetry, and religion, even as daily life has more or less switched over to the “common tongue”, though the former has come to be written with hanzi instead, with the once elegant writing system now living on as the furigana-like pronunciation guides and vulgate used by those without full, classical education.

I figure this common language has its origins in the Ba Sing Se upper ring dialect, likely beginning some untold generations ago with an Earth Kingdom Avatar, promoted by their successors--and Earth Kingdom imperialism--to the point that it is a fact of life in present day. Accordingly, it has displaced local languages most thoroughly in the Earth Kingdom itself, the most ethnically diverse of all the four nations by virtue of size and geographic diversity.

Other fics I’ve read have tacked the opposite direction, giving each culture their own language and finding other ways to explain how our heroes communicate, usually by making them polyglots. It’s certainly a valid approach, but it’s also more work than I’m willing to do when there’s an easier option just staring me in the face.

Having Fun

Like I said before, this stuff has mostly been about me having fun and giving texture to the story I’m writing. It’s not a bible on doing worldbuilding in the Avatar setting, but if you see ideas you like from here or in my fic, by all means don’t be ashamed to borrow. I am doing this as a hobby and see no reason to be defensive about it.

There have been plenty of other blogs on here about how fan culture does tend to approach various cultures in an Orientalizing or Othering fashion, especially the Water Tribe. When I do another one whenever and talk more about some of the worldbuilding I did for the Water Tribe, I’ll touch on that then, with links to the originals which I highly recommend reading. Until then, have a good one.

[trascapades]

🌌#ArtIsAWeapon

#Artist - #ChrisOfili

#Artwork

🎨Image 1: Waterfall - Flower Eaters, 2022⁠

🎨Image 2: Waterfall - Crowning of a Satyr, 2022⁠

🎨Image 3: Waterfall - Artist & Muse (after Boscoe Holder), 2022

Reposted from @artsy Chris Ofili’s playful, kaleidoscopic canvases consider desire and identity, especially as related to African diasporic traditions. The artist’s aesthetic and conceptual influences are legion: A member of the Young British Artists, Ofili has referenced Zimbabwean cave paintings, blaxploitation films, and Catholic iconography. He composes his lush, dense canvases from collage, glitter, and—perhaps most famously—elephant dung.⁠

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Follow the artist on the Artsy app through the link in our bio for updates on available works, market news, and more.⁠

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#BlackGirlArtGeeks

[endlich-allein]

Promo "Reise Reise" (2004), Richard Z. Kruspe — Interview by Olivier Rouhet, 11-08-2004 (Rock Hard #036)

Rock Hard : The last time we saw each other in Paris, we didn't talk too much about music since you wanted to confide at length on the internal problems that Rammstein had encountered...

Richard Z. Kruspe : Yes, I remember that interview very well. I found it very intense because it was the first time that I wanted to speak so openly to journalists about these internal problems. Besides, have you seen the Metallica movie (Editor's note: Some Kind Of Monster) ?

RH : Have you considered using a group therapist, like Metallica did ?

RZK : I did think about it, but we were lucky to be able to get by on our own, without asking anyone for help, except that of our manager who is above all a friend.

© Frédéric Batier — Völkerball

RH : Okay, let's get started on the new album... In this case, on the new iconography of the band... You have just taken a series of strange photos that recall, in their aesthetics, the film Free Fall with Michael Douglas...

RZK : It is indeed this film that served as our inspiration ! We thought it was a good way to make a clean sweep of our past image, as these photos had nothing to do with how the band was portrayed in its early days. I was a little reluctant on this concept and I found these photos ugly but, placed in context, and taking into account the film, I am ultimately very satisfied. On the other hand, I do not yet know if they will constitute the main axis of the artwork of Reise, Reise. Last week, in fact, we shot the music video for our next single, "Amerika": we put ourselves on stage giving a concert on the Moon. It's a nod to the invasion of Americans that we talk about in the song, and, at the same time, it fits well with the idea of ​​travel that a title like Reise, Reise involves. The problem with the photos taken is that we are not sure that we like them : we entrusted their realization to a Spanish photographer, he took very arty shots, but, um, we wonder because they do not correspond not quite what we expected.

RH : Is it true that at the beginning the single “Mein Teil” was only intended for the German market ?

RZK : No, that's wrong, we always think internationally... (Pause) But no, I'm talking bullshit, you're absolutely right ! We only wanted to release this single in German-speaking countries, but it was our English record company that blew up and asked us to do an international version. This request surprised us, especially from England ! Especially since my conviction is that the singles market no longer exists anywhere, with the exception of Germany, perhaps. This is why, in the first place, we only wanted to distribute “Mein Teil” in Germany.

RH : The video for "Mein Teil" was censored on German channels. Is it because of his images or his words ?

RZK : In fact, it is not censored, but it cannot be broadcast before 11:00 p.m. And that's because of the pictures. In Germany, there is a big problem with regard to sexuality on TV, They do not enjoy the sequence where Till gets sucked by an angel that he devours afterwards. So we fired this passage, but that doesn't shock us because it's an incidental shot, not the essence of the video.

© Mein Teil behind the scenes