Laughing at the spirits

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/36/61261/laughing-at-the-spirits-in-north-siberia-is-animism-being-taken-too-seriously/

Joking and other types of ridiculing discourses about spirits play a prominent role in the everyday life of hunters, but not because they entail resistance to or subversion of the dominant cosmological values of the sharing economy. Virtually all Yukaghirs ascribe to the spirit world and the demand sharing principle, and they regard both as immutable and morally just. However—and this is the key point—they are well aware that this system must never become total. For the Yukaghirs, this would stand for “death,” as it would give the spirits the moral right to consume them in a series of divine predatory attacks. To avoid this, hunters must constantly steer a difficult course between two moral realities, transcending the official animist rhetoric of respect and sharing through equally animistic forms of theft, seduction, and deception.

henry compiled

compiled Henry from web sources

old news

партизаны

time's arrow

The Stereoscope and the Stereograph

Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact, matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it. Pull it down or burn it up, if you please. We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in the loss of color; but form and light and shade are the great things, and even color can be added, and perhaps by and by may be got direct from Nature.
There is only one Coliseum or Pantheon; but how many millions of potential negatives have they shed,—representatives of billions of pictures,—since they were erected! Matter in large masses must always be fixed and dear; form is cheap and transportable. We have got the fruit of creation now, and need not trouble ourselves with the core. Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful, grand objects, as they hunt the cattle in South America, for their skins, and leave the carcasses as of little worth.
The consequence of this will soon be such an enormous collection of forms that they will have to be classified and arranged in vast libraries, as books are now. The time will come when a man who wishes to see any object, natural or artificial, will go to the Imperial, National, or City Stereographic Library and call for its skin or form, as he would for a book at any common library. We do now distinctly propose the creation of a comprehensive and systematic stereographic library, where all men can find the special forms they particularly desire to see as artists, or as scholars, or as mechanics, or in any other capacity.


Again, we must have special stereographic collections, just as we have professional and other special libraries. And as a means of facilitating the formation of public and private stereographic collections, there must be arranged a comprehensive system of exchanges, so that there may grow up something like a universal currency of these bank-notes, or promises to pay in solid substance, which the sun has engraved for the great Bank of Nature.

The next European war will send us stereographs of battles. It is asserted that a bursting shell can be photographed. The time is perhaps at hand when a flash of light, as sudden and brief as that of the lightning which shows a whirling wheel standing stock still, shall preserve the very instant of the shock of contact of the mighty armies that are even now gathering. The lightning from heaven does actually photograph natural objects on the bodies of those it has just blasted,—so we are told by many witnesses. The lightning of clashing sabres and bayonets may be forced to stereotype itself in a stillness as complete as that of the tumbling tide of Niagara as we see it self-pictured.
We should be led on too far, if we developed our belief as to the transformations to be wrought by this greatest of human triumph over earthly conditions, the divorce of form and substance. Let our readers fill out a blank check on the future as they like,—we give our indorsement to their imaginations beforehand. We are looking into stereoscopes as pretty toys, and wondering over the photograph as a charming novelty; but before another generation has passed away, it will be recognized that a new epoch in the history of human progress dates from the time when He who

never but in uncreated light
Dwelt from eternity—

took a pencil of fire from the hand of the "angel standing in the sun," and placed it in the hands of a mortal.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

bare suspicions, naked conjectures, blackest malice

… The Prince of Wales was seized with a distemper, which at first was not thought dangerous. It begun on 10th October, a few days before the Elector Palatine's arrival: but he himself believed it of little consequence, that he accompanied the Elector everywhere for some days. He was not forced to keep his bed till the 25th of the same month, and died the 6th of November, at the age of 18 years (5).
Hw was one of the most accomplished Princes that ever was, I will not say in England but in all Europe, if we may believe what Historians relate of him. He was sober, chaste, temperate, religious, full of honour and probity. He was never heard to swear, though the example of his Father and the whole Court, was but apt to corrupt him in that respect (6). He took great delight in the conversation of men of honour; and those who were not reckoned as such, were looked upon with a very ill eye at his Court. He had naturally a greatness of mind, noble and generous thoughts; and was as much displeased with trifles, as his Father was fond of them. He frequently said, if ever he mounted the Throne, his first care should be to try to reconcile the Puritans to the Church of England. As this could not be done without concessions on each side, and as such a condescension was directly contrary to the temper of the Court and Clergy, he was suspected to countenance Puritanism. He was naturally gentle and affable: but however, in his carriage had a noble stateliness without affectation, which commanded esteem and respect. He shewed a warlike genius, in his passionate fondness for all martial exercises. A French Ambassador coming to take his leave of him, found him tossing the Pike, and asking him, what service he would command him to his Master? The Prince bid him tell him, what he was doing. In short, to say all in a word, though he was eighteen years old when he died, no Historian has taxed him with any vice. The King his Father is said to have been jealous of him, and to ask one day, If his Son would bury him alive (7)? I pass over in silence many things said upon this occasion, particularly what some Authors would insinuate, that the King caused him to be poisoned. In such case, the proofs ought to be as clear as the sun, and I find in the most inveterate Historians against King James, only bare suspicions and naked conjectures, which probably were the fruits of the blackest malice. Others are contented with accusing the Viscount Rochester of this crime, but without any manner of proof. Some slight presumptions, which I shall have occasion to speak of elsewhere, may have helped to breed this suspicion, which indeed was spread immediately after the Prince's death. Wherefore his head and body were ordered to be laid open in the preference of many Physicians and Surgeons, who gave their opinion upon Oath, that no marks of poison appeared (8). But what reflected most upon the King, was his commanding that no person should appear at Court in mourning; …













(6) Being once hunting the Stag, a Butcher's dog chanced to kill the Stag, and spoil the sport, which the Prince not resenting, the Huntsmen and Company, to incense him against the Butcher, told him, "if his Father had been served so, he would have sworn so as no Man could have endured it." Away, (says the Prince) all the Pleasure in the World is not worth an Oath. This R. Coke the Historian had from his Father, who was about the Prince's age.
(8) They gave their Opinions on November 7, under their hands as follows, his Liver wan and paler than ordinary. His Gall without Choler, and distended with Wind. His Spleen unnaturally balck; his Lungs spotted, with much Corruption. The Diaphragma blackish; and the Head full of Blood in some places, and in others of Water. As if (says Wilson) no poison could produce such effects, p.690. See Historic. Narrat. c. 15. Howes says, he died of a malignant Fever, which reigned that year in most parts of the land, and carried away a great number of people of all sorts and ages, p.1004

hunters and gatherers

king of the wild frontier

I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust [tree]

I can walk like an ox, run like a fox, swim like an eel,

defensive system

The Boundary Hunters

boundary hunters

skenographia ...mixed realities

From a very early date, as Aristotle attests (Poetics 1449a), scenic painting—skenographia—was a constituent element of Greek theatrical performance. In the temporary stages recorded as having been built in Rome from about the 3^rd century BC well into the Imperial period, and in Roman permanent stages, skenographia employed highly sophisticated perspectival techniques which were designed subtly to modulate between reality and illusion in a variety of ways. For a largely illiterate Roman populace, theatrical performances provided a shared, mythological language which could be adapted to send and receive ideologically- and politically- coded messages in public under the guise of seemingly innocuous “festive entertainment.” Performers, popular audiences and the political elite became increasingly sophisticated at reading and manipulating this symbolic, lingua franca, and freely deployed its codes in other public fora, such as triumphs, funerals, and in circus games (see Beacham, 1999). Although this language increasingly permeated public discourse in these and other ways, we contend that, as the primary, popular, institutional locus of symbolic representation as such, the theatre remained the most important medium through which this shared, symbolic language was negotiated and refined in Roman culture of this period. Consequently, if we are to understand the complex aesthetic-ideological codes operative during Rome’s decisive transition from Republic to Empire, we must study how this language was aesthetically and performatively constructed in the theatre. The wall paintings can enable us to do so.

Through illusionistic confabulations of real and imagined spaces, skenographia played with the borders between reality and illusion, thus establishing the aesthetic—and thereby ideological—“frame” for this public language. Indeed, skenographia was directly and explicitly implicated in these aesthetico-political discourses by contemporaneous Roman commentators such as Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder. Theatrical skenographia is therefore a prime site for scholarly attention. But of the many temporary stages that, according to Vitruvius (5.5.7), were constructed each year at Rome, none survives; and the permanent stage facades (scaenarum frontes) that do remain contain no trace of their temporary skenographic elements.

from King's Visualisation Lab

This painting by Peake [currently in the Van Dyck show at the Tate] seems to use a theatrical schematic for a backdrop; it is like a series of flats, there is a discontinuity in the visual space, some inconsistency and overpainting in the 'seam' between background and middle ground. The painting is contemporaneous with Inigo Jones' masques, which use similarly staged perspectival space to frame tableaux. The painting itself is a charged network of symbolic representations of power, emblazoned and quite literally dazzling, the paint applied like enamelling in the costume and rainbow saddlery. Interestingly, Peake published the Mannerist architect Sebastiano Serlio's books on architecture in 1611- the first publication in English. The books follow the antique and illustrate theatrical spaces. Peake's preface dedicates the translation to Henry Prince of Wales - the subject of the painting above - the shortly to be dead hope of the Jacobean monarchy.

TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE PRINCE HENRY OF WALES

Sir,

No vaine ambition of mine own Desire, much lesse presumption of my none Desert, incited me to present this Volume to your Princely view, but rather, the gracious Countenance, which [even from your Childehood] you have ever daigned to all good endeavours, invited Mee also [after so many others] to offer at the high-Altar of your Highnesse favour, this new-Naturalized Worke of a learned Stranger: Not with pretence of Profit to your Highnesse [who want not more exquisite Tutors in all excellent Sciences] but, under the Patronage of your powerfull Name, to benefit the Publicke; and convay unto my Countrymen [especially Architects and Artifcers of all sorts] there

Necessary, Certaine, and most ready Helps of Geometrie: The ignorance and want whereof, in times past [in most parts of this Kingdome] hath left us many lame Workes, which shame of many Workemen; which, for the future, the Knowledge and use of these Instructions shall happily prevent, if the event but answere [in any measure] to that Hope of mine, which alone both induced this Desire and produced this Designe: Wherein I must confesse my part but small, saving my great adventure in the Charge, and my great Good-will to doe Good. All which together with my best Services, I humbly prostrate at your Princely feete, as beseemes

Your Highnesse

most humble Servant

the noble art of venerie or hunting / 1576

Hut in the woods