Tag: Essays

Pornolepsia

Posted on by John Jefferson Selve
Fashion photography cut diagonally by Caravaggio.

We can, of course, date the first pornographic representations back to the Venus of Hohle Fels—in other words, 35,000 before the present day. She nevertheless retains signs specific to fertility, despite the obscenity of the sexual parts. Ancient Greece then, in turn, consecrated the concept of erotic scenes, whose sole justification was the pleasure of observing fellow human beings giving themselves pleasure. Pornography has no other aim than to reduce divine urges to the principles of flesh and lowly humanity. Continue reading “Pornolepsia” →

Kostis Bezos, a Greek Chameleon

Posted on by Tony Klein

The Kostis Enigma

Rebetiko, plural rebetika (Greek: ρεμπέτικο, ρεμπέτικα respectively), is a term used today to refer to originally disparate kinds of urban Greek folk music which have come to be grouped together since the so-called rebetika revival, which started in the 1960s and developed further from the early 1970s onwards. The word rebetiko is an adjectival form derived from the Greek word rebetis (Greek: ρεμπέτης), a word nowadays construed to signify a person who embodies aspects of character, dress, behaviour, morals and ethics associated with a particular Greek subculture. It is closely related, but not identical in meaning, to the words mangas (Greek: μάγκας) and mortis (Greek: μόρτης) but its etymology remains the subject of dispute and uncertainty. Rebetika, an often raw and uncompromising music, was simply not allowed into Greek recording studios in its genuine forms until about 1931. Continue reading “Kostis Bezos, a Greek Chameleon” →

Psychogeography: A New Paradigm?

Posted on by Nuno Coelho

Psychogeography is a critical tool encouraging the study of the effects of a particular urban environment on the emotions, cognitive responses and behaviour of individuals. The term, first defined by French political theorist Guy Debord in his essay Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, encompassed the “study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” At the core of this method of urban data gathering was the dérive, a form of walking or drifting. For Debord, a dérive was “the practice of a passional journey out of the ordinary through a rapid changing of ambiances.” Initially, the dérive was a tool to increase individual awareness of urban surroundings and its alienating effects. Unlike the flâneur of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, Debord was less interested in interpreting the space and more in the personal experience while observing a drift. At stake was the exact investigation of the effect of the geographic, architectural space on individuals’ emotions and consciousness. Continue reading “Psychogeography: A New Paradigm?” →

Abstractless Codes: Non-generalised Speech and the Upending of Contemporary Linguistics

Posted on by Richard Wirick

If language, and its representational or coding function, makes up the world, or if, as Wittgenstein said beautifully in his Tractatus, ‘Reality is the shadow of grammar,’ what kind of world would we have if we spoke a language that allowed of little or no abstraction, generalization, descriptions of the past or the future? A view of reality that is ‘intensely and only immediate’ seems puzzling and impractical. Yet there are Amazon tribes, notably the Piraha, who speak of and view their experience in just this way. If a man goes around a bend in the river, no observations about him can obtain except for xibipio—he has gone out of experience.’ They use the same phrase when a candle flame flickers—the light ‘goes in and out of experience.’ Continue reading “Abstractless Codes: Non-generalised Speech and the Upending of Contemporary Linguistics” →