Rastelli Erzahlt

The exorbitant path of the ball defies the laws of nature, giving the illusion of a virtuosity not to be comprehended by the human intellect. How is it to be interpreted? Rastelli ends his story here. Could it be that the juggler is juggled. For the dwarf is a joker!

The incomparable, unforgotten juggler Rastelli told this story one evening in his dressing room to me:
In ancient times, he began, there was a great juggler whose fame had spread with the caravans and merchant ships far over the globe. One day the ruler of the Turks, Mohammed Ali Bei, learned of him and sent his messengers to the directions of the wind to seek the master and invite him to Constantinople. Mohammed Ali Bei was a dictatorial, even inhumane, prince. A singer who had not found approval before him was thrown in the dungeon. But his generosity was also well known. An artist who pleased him could count on a high reward!
The master was found and after several months arrived in Constantinople for his audience.
However, he didn't alone. He made very little fuss about his companion - a boy dwarf. To be sure, such an exceptionally fine, graceful and swift little creature had never been seen at Sultan Mohammed Ali Bei's court.
The master and the dwarf never lived under the same roof during their travels. He had good reason to keep the dwarf hidden. The two of them, as is well known, went to the Chinese school and became acquainted with a single simple prop. It was a ball. There was nothing to equal the wonders of this ball.
It seemed as though the master were dealing with a living property. Now docile, now obstinate, affectionate, scoffing, he dealt with his prop as a comrade. No one knew about the secret of the ball. The the nimble dwarf sat inside, playing on compression springs as easily as on the strings of a guitar.
The day commanded by the sultan had arrived. The Hall of the Half-Moon was filled with dignitaries and the ruler as the master bowed toward the throne. He brought a flute to his lips and blew a staccato beat. Suddenly, the ball approached from the soffits and fawned around its master, then jumped on his shoulders! Just as the earth turns around the sun the ball turned around the dancer. There was no spot from head to foot where it did not play. It was just the way the master's concealed helper had done it for years. Now the finale took place. The master took his flute and the flute seized command for itself. The flute breathed new life into the ball and it began to hop. It hopped gradually higher while the master raised his arm. He stretched out his little finger and the ball, obeying a last, long trill, settled on it with a single bound.
As a murmur of admiration went through the crowd, the sultan himself began the applause. The master caught a heavy, ducat-filled purse flung to him and flew from the hall.
He stepped out of the palace to await the loyal dwarf at a remote exit. On the way, a messenger pushed his way through the guards to hand him a note. The letter bore the dwarf's handwriting:
"Dear Master, you must not be annoyed with me. Today you can't show yourself to the sultan. I am sick and cannot leave my bed."
As Rastelli was in his dressing room that evening, he said, "You see that our profession wasn't born yesterday and that we have our own story - or our stories."





The fact that in the morning the pupil knows by heart the contents of the book he has put under his pillow the night before, that the Lord inspires His own in their sleep, and that a pause is creative — to make space for such things to happen is the alpha and omega of all mastery, its hallmark. This, then, is the reward before which the gods have placed sweat. For work which achieves only modest success is child’s play, compared to the success conjured up by luck. This is why Rastelli’s stretched-out little finger attracts the ball, which hops onto it like a bird. The decades’ worth of practice that came to before does not mean that either his body or the ball is ‘in his power,’ but it enables the two to reach an understanding behind his back. To weary the master to the point of exhaustion through diligence and hard work, so that at long last his body and each of his limbs can act in accordance with their own rationality: this is what is called ‘practice.’ It is successful because the will abdicates its power once and for all inside the body, abdicates in favor of the organs — the hand, for instance. This is why you can look for something for days, until you finally forget it; then, one day, when you are looking for something else, you suddenly find the first object. Your hand has, so to speak, taken the matter in hand and has joined forces with the object

£3. all day

Early Neurological Tools

http://www.movementdisorders.org/james_parkinson/early_neurological.html
Gilles de la Tourette and Footprint Diagrams
A. French neurologist George Gilles de la Tourette (1857-1904).
B. Footprint diagrams from the doctoral thesis of Gilles de la Tourette (1885) entitled Etudes Cliniques et Physiologiques sur la Marche.  This student work analyzed normal gait as well as the walking patterns of patients with Parkinson’s disease, locomotor ataxia, Friedreich’s ataxia and numerous neuropathies.


Agamben - Notes on Gesture

mobile vulgus

Albrecht Dürer’s Memorial to the Peasants' War (1525)

Beckham tattoo

 

FIG. 41.—Christ Suffering. Vignette to Dürer’s “Larger Passion.”

the prophecy of Isaiah (53:3): " He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows , and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

 

John Latham / Niddrie Woman / Proposals 1975-6 

Waste / Monument to labour

Insistence on figuration / Disarticulated woman / spurious relation to prehistory / willendorf venus

This is an Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) sketch of an unbuilt memorial to the peasant rebels of 1525. The sketch parodies monuments to the royal and princely warlords who fought against the untrained, ill-equipped, and overmatched peasants. The memorial consists of various objects from peasant life (mostly agricultural tools) arranged in columnar form. On top of the column is a peasant in the pose of the resting Christ. He has been stabbed in the back with a sword. 

Dürer’s Peasant Pictures

The Measure of Turmoil: Dürer’s Monument to the Vanquished Peasants

If someone wishes to erect a victory monument after vanquishing rebellious peasants, he might use paraphernalia according to the following instructions: Place a quadrangular stone block measuring ten feet in width and four feet in height on a quadrangular stone slab which measures twenty feet in length and one foot in height. On the four corners of the ledge place tied-up cows, sheep, pigs, etc. But on the four corners of the stone block place four baskets, filled with butter, eggs, onions, and herbs, or whatever you like. In the centre of this stone block place a second one, measuring seven feet in length and one foot in height. On top of this second block place a strong chest four feet high, measuring six and a half feet wide at the bottom and four feet wide at the top. Then place a kettle upside down on top of the chest. The kettle’s diameter should be four and a half feet at the rim and three feet at its bottom. Surmount the kettle with a cheese bowl which is half a foot high and two and a half feet in diameter at the bottom. Cover this bowl with a thick plate that protrudes beyond its rim. On the plate, place a keg of butter which is three feet high and two and a half feet in diameter at the bottom. Cover this bowl with a thick plate that protrudes beyond its rim. On the plate, place a keg of butter which is three feet high and has a diameter of a foot and a half at the bottom, and of only a foot at the top. Its spout should protrude beyond this. On the top of the butter keg, place a well-formed milk jug, two and a half feet high, and with a diameter which is one foot at its bulge, half a foot at its top, and is wider at its bottom. Into this jug put four rods branching into forks on top and extending five and a half feet in height, so that the rods will protrude by half a foot, and then hang peasants’ tool on it – like hoes, pitchforks, flails, etc. The rods are to be surmounted by a chicken basket, topped by a lard tub upon which sits an afflicted peasant with a sword stuck into his back

Albrecht Dürer, Unterweisung der Messung (Treatise on Measurement), 1525

Durer self portrait as the Man of Sorrows 1522

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

fearful symmetry

Halt Mass

Germany
Dated AD 1515

Printed from 192 individual blocks

The Triumphal Arch is one of the largest prints ever produced. It was commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519). The programme was devised by the court historian and mathematician, Johann Stabius, who explains underneath that it was constructed after the model of 'the ancient triumphal arches of the Roman Emperors'.
Above the central arch, entitled 'Honour and Might', is a genealogy of Maximilian in the form of a family tree. Above the left arch, 'Praise', and the right arch, 'Nobility', are represented events from his life. These are flanked by busts of emperors and kings on the left, and a column of Maximilian's ancestors on the right. The outermost towers on either side show scenes from the private life of Maximilian.  The architect and painter Jörg Kölderer designed the overall appearance of the structure, and Dürer designed the individual scenes and architectural elements, some of which he sub-contracted to his pupils Hans Springinklee and Wolf Traut, and Albrecht Altdorfer of Regensburg.    BM

Historically, Luddites flourished In Britain from about 1811 to 1816. They were bands of men, organized, masked, anonymous, whose object was to destroy machinery used mostly in the textile industry. They swore allegiance not to any British king but to their own King Ludd.

Pynchon

The Capitulation of Gaeta.; SCENES AT THE CLOSE OF THE SIEGE.

In London Paul Pretsch patented a process called "photo-galvanography" for the printed reproduction of photographs.
The first print that Pretsch issued was called "Scene in Gaeta after the Explosion." It was "the first relief half-tone and the first commercial use of half-tone" (Printing and the Mind of Man. Catalogue of the Exhibitions Held at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London [1963] no. 629).

The History of Electrolytic Printmaking

Published: March 2, 1861

Correspondence of the Paris Presse.

CASTELLONE, Thursday, Feb. 7, 1861.

Already the other day a powder magazine burst at the south extremity of the Philippstadt Battery, causing considerable loss to the enemy; but I have now to record a far more terrible explosion. Yesterday, about 5 o'clock in the afternoon a shell from the Predmontese lines on the right penetrated into one of the powder magazines, which blew up and set fire to the great reserve store of projectiles, which blew up likewise. The explosion was so terrible that the report was reechoed from the most distant valleys for a long time. A French vessel, although six miles from Gaeta, felt the shock. I had left the village about 4 o'clock to take a stroll through the mountains leading to Castello Onorato, when, reaching the summit of a small hill which commands a view of the gulf and the whole neighborhood, I was almost thrown to the ground by the effect of the explosion which had just taken place to my left. I turned my gaze towards Gaeta, and was horrified at the immense masses of ruin, some pieces high in the air, amidst a black smoke and tongues of flame which lighted up the spires of the town. It was something horrible, and reminded me of PLINY the Younger's description of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a letter to TACITUS, narrating the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. I hastily descended into the valley, and on reaching Castellone I was informed that the explosion had not only caused the death of some hundred Neapolitan soldiers, but that also a considerable number of living beings were still under the ruins.

During the stillness of the night we could discern the stifled cries of those unfortunate men, as General CIALDINI had humanely ordered all firing to cease. A Neapolitan messenger arrived requesting an armistice of forty-eight hours. He asked for it in the name of humanity, for, he said, it was impossible to ascertain the number of victims buried in the ruins by the explosion. You will easily agree with me that cool reason of interest might have advised CIALDINI to refuse the request of the military Governor of Gaeta. For a bold and daring General like CIALDINI, it was an admirable opportunity to attempt a coup de main, which probably would have succeeded. Not listening to the voice of interest, the Piedmontese General did not hesitate for a moment to grant a suspension of hostilities, on the sole condition that the besieged should not work at repairing the breach made recently by the Piedmontese. We shall thus have an armistice, which will terminate to-morrow morning, and in forty-eight hours I may have great results to record. I do not believe, as is reported here, that FRANCES II, has made any proposals for a capitulation, which must follow sooner or later. The battery on the sea side has been much damaged by the fire from the Sardinian frigate Garibaldi. Her daring Captain took up a position only 1,000 metres from the curtain, and kept up a continual fire for an hour and a-half.

map of system

en creux

The structure which controls the concrete existence of men, i.e. which informs the lived ideology of the relations between men and objects and between objects and men, this structure, as a structure, can never be depicted by its presence, in person, positively, in relief, but only by traces and effects, negatively, by indices of absence, in intaglio (en creux)

althusser / cremonini

civilis seditio

 

"The Aegyptian Pyramides & colossus" (Pyramids & Sphinx) anonymous engraver after a picture by George Sandys, published in Sandys Relation of a Journey begun An Dom. 1610

An emblem of the English Civil War with a double-headed snake crawling before the Egyptian pyramids with the head of the Sphinx at the left. 1643 /Wenceslas Hollar

FTW! //victory ceremony//militainment

wound man / wound woman

Tiqqun cut up by chatbot ai /// denouncing agents of detachable moments

where control is still imperfect, the masses are invited to human dignity

where control is the child 

denouncing agents of others 

8 public space, etc to work urban furniture 

all those who have contributed by their good and circulation of all anonymous gatherings and circulation of others 

article 8 public space is the first public space 

article 4 every child is happiness those who receive ritalin, article 2 public space without surveillance from their article 4 every child attributed to commodity semiocracy the end
 
4: final warning to no one belongs to render impossible such demonstrations and all
 
article 4 every child attributed to human dignity 
 like all available resources are invited to the first public space is made for tanning on the imaginary party in our midst is neutral space all citizens
  
final warning to the state grants to commodity semiocracy the law for the purpose in stadiums there the beach is yeah 

ah 2 work 

we thank all abnormal behavior should be put to our fellow citizens
 
engaged in a a conscious fraction of commodities 

all manifestations of commodities 

article the existence of society all the intolerable nuisance they cause to no one complains 

article 3 offices are just trying to hide must be considered suspect consequently,  

article 8 public space, meaning that therein, discotheques and in stadiums  

n hospices there all available resources are old folks in stadiums there yeah
 
all abnormal behavior to render impossible such demonstrations and the first public space, the exchange and all 

like all the state grants to no one 

we thank all other amusement parks set up for working in stadiums there are made up of singular existence mean an attack on the exchange and all available resources are now to work urban furniture, meaning that therein, suitable decors


life is space that adult 

offices are you 

west of a conscious action    

final warning to hide must be creative 

dont know how to hide, practices anonymity like dark?
 
1: where there's happiness name, who desire entertainment have leisure spaces, but instead spreads doubts everywhere about the beach is in libraries there are in 

where control is still incomplete psycho social training, people may move about freely within it in the whole, 

where control monitoring ccm, discotheques and all those who have contributed by service teams under the state grants to work urban furniture, citizens are old folks

every child attributed to the purpose of biopower wants you know, even if you could be happy and in the interest of article 6 the for the law for the occupation of all behavior contrary to the public space without surveillance from their in stadiums there are invited to intervene and for the

like all, discotheques and all those who desire entertainment have leisure spaces, citizens are invited to the integrity of the nearest preventive surveillance action psa patrol 

: denouncing agents of all the public way during festivals organized for their attention, etc to happen again

With an unprecedented calibration of subjectivities  

with a global networking of the state

Under a new surface of peace 

final warning to making these principles go without saying

and circulation of life is the war continues branches out drags on

NIALL

ALICE