Anarchy in the UK

Les colchiques

Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne

Cause 'n Consequence

You talk too loud
You think too straight
You act too confident
You judge too soon

Poetry evaporates
Beauty distances
Reality reasons
Gods die

(Pope Pulci of Zhu Xie the 7th)

Ihr bringt mir alle die Dinge um...

Poverty of Words

I am so afraid of people's words.

They describe so distinctly everything:

And this they call dog and that they call house,

here the start and there the end.

I worry about their mockery with words,

they know everything, what will be, what was;

no mountain is still miraculous;

and their house and yard lead right up to God.

I want to warn and object: Let the things be!

I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.

But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.

That's how you kill.

(Rilke)

The man of the new century

Amusing predictions by american fashion designers from the 1930s of what the well-dressed man and woman would be wearing in the year 2000.

Lion versus Man in the 1920s

La sortie des usines Lumière

The 'plot' is outlined by the title: the film consists of a single shot of workers leaving the Lumiere factory, and the film would be of virtually no interest (except to students of late 19th century clothing) were it not for the fact that it was the first film ever to be projected to a paying audience, and is consequently one of the most important films in the history of the cinema (IMDB).

Children

The hapless child (performed by Michael Mantler) is inspired by the books of Edward Gorey.

The Labyrinth

(Piranesi's painting (could have been Escher's nightmare))

"... It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there may be no way out of the Labyrinth. Dennis Hollier in his book on George Bataille, points out that from Bacon to Leibniz the Labyrinth was linked with the desire to get out, and science was seen as the means to find an exit. Rejecting such an interpretation, Bataille suggested that its only effect was to transform the Labyrinth into a banal prison. The traditional meaning of the metaphor was reversed: one never knows whether one is inside or outside or not, since one cannot grasp it in one look. Just as language gives us words that encircle us but that we use in order to break their surround, the Labyrinth of experience was full of openings that did not tell whether they opened towards its outside or its inside.

(Tschumi)

Rain

We Ain't Got No Money, Honey, But We Got Rain

(Bukowski)

Definitions

“Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness”

(Mark Twain)