Fig. 1: Still from The Truman Show (1998)

Thank you for reading.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT 1998

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Double-headed delight in the night
Make money in your underwear
Since chicks that lost bets
Have to *do* things for the first time
Please, I need to train my mouth to
Earn a degree in criminal justice
Can I use your pecker
As my own personal licking station?
Take a ride with our teen cherry-picker
Messy manglue guzzlers
Beefy twinkeys taking a big one for the team
George Bush fart-machine
Outstandingly nasty ducksicking videos
Gigantic tiny breasts . . .
Aren’t you sick of getting spam?

COPYRIGHT 2014

DOMINIC P.

Non è controllabile la vita, e non finisce in modo perfetto. Solo l’arte puoi controllare, l’arte e la masturbazione: due campi in cui sono un’indiscussa autorità.
Gli intellettuali sono come la mafia: si uccidono tra di loro.

Woody Allen, Stardust memories, 1980

Meglio essere polvere che una donna senza fascino.

Heinrich von Kleist, Pentesilea, 1808

Scusate la polvere.

Dorothy Parker, Epitaffio, 1967

Hetcì – hetciù.

Il Mago Pancione

NIENTE A CHE VEDERE CON LE PULIZIE

Chissà se a questo punto qualcuno si sarà chiesto come mai il concetto di Nido Di Polvere non ha nemmeno sfiorato l’argomento “pulizie”.

L’artista Fragogna è tutto sommato una donna e purtroppo il femminismo ha ancora senso di esistere checchè si dica. Associare la femmina alla scopa, alla ramazza, allo straccio e alle incombenze casalinghe sarebbe stato offensivo. Però al momento l’artista Fragogna è single (Chiamami 😉 quindi le faccende domestiche le sbriga da sola per questo, come potrete osservare nel Vol.2 PHOTOs l’accumulo delle masse è talmente abbondante da riempire la Hall della Tate Modern.

Il concetto simbolico di Nido comunque, vogliamo mettere in chiaro, è contrario a: bonificare, correggere, detergere, lavare, lustrare, medicare, mondare, forbire, raspare, rassettare, riordinare, sarchiare, sbucciare, schiumare, sfrondare, sgrassare, smacchiare, spazzare, spelare, spennare, spinare, spolverare, strigliare, sventrare, lisciare, liberare, cancellare, perfezionare, rifinire, ripulire, nettare, limare, levigare, polire, lucidare, depurare, purificare, migliorare, patinare, bendare, curare, disinfettare, fasciare, scrostare, sfregare, far pulizia, mettere in ordine, riassettare, sistemare, fare i mestieri, fare le faccende, fare le pulizie, sfaccendare, diserbare, raschiare, sgranare, sgusciare, spellare, filtrare, spumare, candeggiare, portar via, sgomberare, spiumare, deliscare, preparare, bruschinare, ravviare, spazzolare, eviscerare, asciugare, accarezzare, bucare, mancare, ungere, assolvere, campare, guarire, rilasciare, ritrarre, scampare, scaricare, scartare, scatenare, sciogliere, sfogare, sgombrare, sollevare, spogliare, sviluppare, togliere, vuotare, innalzare, ripassare, rivedere, cucinare, governare, rubare.

Giusto per non correre rischi di fraintendimento.

| CONCLUSIONs

You can’t control life. It doesn’t wind up perfectly. Only-only art you can control. Art and masturbation. Two areas in which I am an absolute expert.
Intellectuals are like the mafia: they kill each other.

Woody Allen, Stardust memories, 1980

Better to be dust then a woman without charm.

Heinrich von Kleist, Pentesilea, 1808

Excuse my dust.

Dorothy Parker, Epitaph, 1967

Hetcì – hetciù.

The Mago Pancione

NOTHING TO SHARE WITH THE CLEANING

I wonder if anyone of you at this point is questioning why the concept of Nest Of Dust has not even touched the topic of “cleaning.”

The artist Fragogna is after all a woman and feminism unfortunately it still makes sense to exist whatever people tells you. Associating the female to the broom, the mop and the tasks of an housewife, it would have been offensive. But now the artist Fragogna is single (Call me 😉 that means that she has to make all the job herself, as you can see in the Vol.2 PHOTOs, accumulation of the masses is so abundant that will be easy to fill the Hall of the Tate Modern.

The concept of a symbolic Nido however, we want to make it clear, is contrary to: clean up, fix, clean, wash, polish, medicate, cleanse, furbishing, rasp, make clean, tidy, weed, peel, skim, prune, degreasing, stain removal, sweeping, stripping, plucking, bone it, dusting, groom, gut, smooth, free, delete, refine, refine, clean, nectar, shaping, sanding, polish agent, polishing, purify, cleanse, improve, skate, blindfold, cure, disinfect, bandage, to scrape, rub, to clean, tidy, tidy up, place, make crafts, doing chores, cleaning, sfaccendare, weeding, scraping, shelling, shelling, stripping, filtering, foaming, bleach, take away, clear, plucking, deliscare, prepare, bruschinare, restart, brushing, gut, dry, stroking, pierce, miss, anointing, fulfilling, living, heal, release, withdraw, escape, download, discard, unleash, untie, vent, clear, lift, strip, develop, remove, drain, raise, review, revise, cooking, grooming, stealing.

Just not to run the risk of misunderstanding.

RICORDATI DI SANTIFICARE IL NEST

Quando nel 1996 Fragogna cominciò a fare foto ai nidi di polvere accumulatisi negli angoli di casa sua e dei suoi amici e parenti mai avrebbe immaginato di portare avanti il progetto per ben diciassette anni.

I risultati di tale progetto hanno partorito:

• Diciannovemilaseicentotrentatre fotografie tra pellicola e digitale;
• Ventisei quaderni d’appunti;
• Quattromilasette schizzi;
• Trentaquattro scatole di scarpe di immagini e ritagli;
• Sei scatoloni di oggetti trovati durante le operazioni di rassettamento tra cui: un orecchino d’oro, un dente da latte, una serie di calzini spaiati che si sospetta siano i gemelli dei calzini persi in lavatrice;
• Quindici sacchi da cinquanta litri di polveri sottili;
• Ventisette sacchi da centodieci litri di polveri pesanti e varie rottamerie;
• Centoventi matasse di capelli di vari colori e lunghezze;
• Tre bidoni di metallo;
• Otto cestini di plastica di varie dimensioni (di cui tre fuxia, due rossi, uno blu, uno grigio e uno a pois verde e celeste);
• Un bidone aspirapolvere con le ruote dell’anteguerra;
• Sette scope per sette secchielli;
• Cinquantacinque palette (gli amici gliene hanno regalate molte, forse per ironia);

• Nessuno staccio.
• Nemmeno guanti.

Purtroppo non è rimasta alcuna testimonianza di tutto questo materiale (a parte il libro e alcune foto e immagini miracolosamente sopravvissute perchè al momento si trovano ancora in possesso dell’autrice) perchè la notte del quindici gennaio duemilatredici (15/01/2013) una banda di predoni ha scassinato la porta blindata del Deposito 54 dell’Area 11 nella zona X dove erano classificati ed imballati i sopraelencati feticci.

Che il cielo fulmini i maledetti.

A onorare la memoria dei lunghi anni di lavoro assiduo e dedicato, Fragogna ha deciso di realizzare questo libro e l’opera Nest Of Dust (Ill. 11) che verrà esposta in tre esemplari di diverse dimensioni e simultaneamente alla Tate Modern di Londra, Al MoMa di New York e all’Hamburger Bahnhof di Berlino. Al momento sono in corso anche delle trattative con il Palais de Tokyo di Parigi e altre prestigiose sedi in Cina e negli Emirati Arabi ma non avendo alcuna certezza non vogliamo promettere inconcrete illusioni.

THOU SHALT SANCTIFY THE NEST

When in 1996 Fragogna began to take pictures of nests of dust accumulated in the corners of her, her friends and family’s houses, she would have never imagined to take the project forward for seventeen years.

The result of this project has giving birth to:

• 19,633 between film and digital photographs;
• 26 notebooks of notes;
• 4,007 sketches;
• 34 shoe boxes of pictures and clippings;
• 6 boxes of objects found during cleaning operations including: a gold earring, a baby tooth, a series of odd socks that are suspected to have twins lost socks in the washing machine;
• 15 bags of fifty liters of fine dust;
• 27 bags of one hundred and ten liters of heavy dust and various waste;
• 120 hanks of hair of various colors and lengths;
• 3 metal bins;
• 8 plastic baskets of various sizes (including three fuchsia, two red, one blue, one gray and one green polka dots and blue);
• A canister vacuum cleaner with wheels;
• 7 brooms with seven buckets;
• 55 dustpans (friends have gifted her many, perhaps ironically);

• No rags.
  
• Not even gloves.
  

Unfortunately there has been no evidence of all this material left (aside from the book and some photos and pictures miraculously survived because they are still in possession of the author) because on the night of the first of January 15.2013 (15/01/2013) a band of robbers broke into the security door of Vault 54 in the Area 11 of the X zone where the fetishes listed above were classified and packed.

That the sky would reduce to ashes those morons.

To honor the memory of long years of hard work and dedication, Fragogna decided to create this book and the work Nest Of Dust (Ill. 11), which will be exhibited in three specimens of different sizes and simultaneously at the Tate Modern in London, at MoMa in New York and at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. At this moment we are negotiating with the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and other prestigious venues in China and the Emirates but not having any certainty we do not want to promise you inconcrete illusions.

I PIACERI DELLA CARTA

Il concetto del Nido Di Polvere ha senso solo se messo su carta. Se non esistesse questo compendio di quasi ottanta pagine comprese le pagine bianche (come insegnano i vuoti di Henry Moore) e i due volumi di fotografie e immagini varie, l’opera non esisterebbe. Esisterebbe ma non esisterebbe. Il Nido Di Polvere esisterebbe sotto ai vostri letti, dietro gli armadi, tra gli interstizi, nella mia testa. Se l’idea non fosse cresciuta e maturata su carta, non esisterebbe. L’opera d’arte ce l’hai in mano. Congratulazioni.

Il Nido Di Polvere è nato sotto forma di titolo ancor prima di essere idea. Era titolo, è diventato materia, si è digitalizzato su pagine InDesign ed è uscito dalla tipografia nero su bianco. Dalla polvere parola alla polvere di fatto alla Polvere stampata.

L’opera d’arte è nata astratta e si è concretizzata grazie al pubblico. Se alcuni di voi lettori non avessero acquistato l’opera in prevendita, l’opera non esisterebbe. Non solo non sarebbe stata stampata ma nemmeno sarebbe stata realizzata. Sarebbe esistita solo come “prima di copertina” la sua forma virtuale. Se il primo di voi anzi, la prima di voi Claudia Di Giacomo, non avesse prenotato la prima copia virtuale io non avrei nemmeno iniziato a scrivere il libro. Grazie Claudia.

E allora, tutta questo desiderio di derisione dell’arte concettuale contemporanea cos’è diventato se non una celebrazione dell’arte concettuale stessa attraverso la messa in atto dell’opera Nido? Il mio vecchio Boss di quando lavoravo in pubblicità, Walter Paggioro, si riferiva al “lavoro di concetto” come all’occupazione per esempio di: catalogare l’archivio, tagliare i cartoncini, impaginare a mano le proposte, ecc. (erano gli ultimi anni in cui si faceva ancora tutto a mano). Queste attività hanno occupato la maggior parte del mio tempo negli anni dell’apprendistato e anche un po’ oltre. Forse questa formula paggioriana mi è rimasta così bene impressa in testa e sulle mani che poi, quando ho cominciato a “fare l’artista seriamente” e mi sono trovata in mezzo al mare magnum degli artisti concettuali che non hanno mai preso in mano neanche un cutter (non tutti, sto esagerando ovviamente) e che però mi sentenziavano che la pittura solo per il fatto di essere legata ai canoni classici non aveva più senso, mi sono sentita in dovere (per puro orgoglio) di dire la mia.

Il concetto è fondamentale, questo è logico. Non esiste azione senza il concetto. Che sia un concetto puramente intellettuale, che sia un concetto di bassa manovalanza, che tu prenda in mano un pennello, un piccone o un laptop per portarlo a buon fine, ma che vada a buon fine. L’idea non è più importante del risultato estetico e percettivo dell’opera. Se l’idea è molto buona e sono buoni anche il risultato estetico, formale e percettivo dell’opera allora possiamo godere di un’opera d’arte. Un’opera di arte-arte fatta da un artista-artista. Senza approssimazione. Credo.

E detto questo, mi rimetto alla clemenza della corte.
E comunque, sono tutti discorsi opinabili. Logicamente.

Grazie.
Barbara Fragogna, 2013

THE PLEASURES OF THE PAPER

The concept of the Nest Of Dust makes sense only if it is put on paper. If there were not this compendium of nearly eighty pages including blank pages (as taught in the voids of Henry Moore) and two volumes of photographs and various images, the work would not exist. It would but it would not exist. The Nest Of Dust exists under your bed, behind cupboards, between the interstices, in my head. If the idea would had not grown and matured on paper, it would not exist. You have the artwork in your hand. Congratulations.

The Nest Of Dust was born in the form of a title before being an idea. It was a title, it has become the matter, it is digitized in pages of an InDesign document and it is released from the printing in black and white. From the word dust to the fact of the printed dust.

The artwork was born in an abstract way and it took shape thanks to the public. If some of you, dear readers, have not purchased the work in advance, the work would not exist. Not only would not have been printed but it would not have been achieved either. It would have existed only as “front cover”, in a virtual form. If the first of you, Claudia D.G., would had not booked the first virtual copy I would not have even started to write the book. Thank you Claudia.

And then, all this desire to mock contemporary conceptual art what is become if not a celebration of conceptual art itself through the implementation of the Nesty work? My old boss when I worked in advertising, Walter Paggioro, referred to the “work of concept” as for example: cataloging the archive, cut the cards, typeset by hand the proposals, etc.. (they were the last years when everything was still made by hand). These activities have occupied most of my time in the years of apprenticeship and even a little over. Perhaps this paggiorian formula has stayed with me so well imprinted on my head and hands that then, when I began to “be an artist seriously,” and I found myself in the midst of the vast sea of conceptual artists who have never even picked up a cutter (not all, I’m exaggerating of course) and which, however, pontificated that painting, for the simple fact of being tied to the classical canons, did not make sense, I felt compelled (for pure pride) to speak my mind.

The concept is fundamental, this is logical. There is no action without a concept. Whether it’s a purely intellectual concept or a concept of unskilled labor, if you take up a brush, a pickaxe or a laptop to bring it to fruition, but it has to be successful. The idea is not more important than the aesthetic and perceptive work. If the idea is very good and the aesthetic result, formal and perceptual are good as well then we can enjoy a real work of art. A work of art-art made by an artist-artist. Without approximation. I guess.

Having said this, I defer to the mercy of the court. And anyway, all speeches are questionable. Logically.

Thank you.
Barbara Fragogna, 2013

SPECIAL THANKs

A tutti i sostenitori che acquistando le prime 80 copie del libro in pre-vendita ne hanno reso possibile la stampa di tutta l’edizione:

To all the supporters which purchasing the first 80 copies of the book in pre-sales, have made it possible to print the whole edition:

Claudia Di Giacomo, Simone Francescato, Gabriella Fiore, Gino Roberti, Lara Vedovato, Russell Radzinski, Paolo Menon, Danjela Stoianović, Simona Cannata, Emanuele Crotti, Karin e Remco, Christian Del Monte, Petra Cason, Mary Dal Corno, Raffaella Frare e Gianni Fragogna, Greta Bisandola, Ellen De Vos, Anna Altobello, Arianna Ferrari, Desdemona Varon, Walter Paggioro, Aline Vater, Rebecca Agnes, Martin Reiter, Linda Cerna, Giorgia Magagnini, Adriano Michelon, Paola Francescon, Thomas Magnusson, Renzo Marasca, Ester Donninelli, Leda Borghero, Petrov Ahner, Miriam Wuttke, Agnes Kaplon, Roberto Scano, Ilaria Cogo, Elisabetta Torresin, Isabella Formenti, John Mander, Anna Viani, Sonja Rohleder, Leticia Arpesella, Carolina Pepe, Cesare Belliti, Elisabetta Chiappa, Anabela Reis, Nele Tippelmann, Aurora Di Mauro, Stefania Cerruti, Giordano Boscolo, Sabatino Cerosismo, Maurizio L’Altrella, Nicola Bertocco, Michele Simionato, Angelo & Ivan di Vainart, Natalia, Roman Nowak, Elisa Ganivet, Andrea Rosset, Philipp Koch, Tatiana Motterle, Giulia D’Odorico, Ludovico Pensato, Alessandra Ivul, Luca Barbieri, Alessandro Chiaretto, Chiara Dellea, Jean-Philippe de la Ravière, Marco Pavin.

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

L’arte, come la teologia, è una frode ben confezionata.

Philip K. Dick

La vera opera d’arte non è forse, quella che s’impone senza ambizioni di successo e che nasce da una autentica abilità e da una sicura maturità professionale?

Papa Giovanni Paolo II

Arte senza cuore. Primavera senza sole.

Libero Bovio

UN GRAN POLVERONE

Quando chiedemmo a Fragogna come mai non avesse esposto il Nido in precedenza la sua risposta è sgorgata senza esitazione “Perchè me ne vergognavo.” ci disse.

Per molti anni Fragogna non ha saputo che forma avrebbe preso il Nido. Come abbiamo accennato nel primo capitolo, Fragogna è un’artista che principalmente si occupa di pittura e di arte visiva in genere. La sua ricerca pittorica, nella quale non vogliamo entrare nel merito in questa sede, si costituisce con e per mezzo degli elementi dell’arte classica ossia tele, pennelli, colori, carta, inchiostri, matite e creta.

L’idea di portare avanti un progetto parallelo e nascosto del quale non sapeva bene che fare le procurava un senso di prostrazione del quale a volte riusciva a liberarsi solo attraverso le esplosioni dei suoi corpi intelaiati (si può congetturare che la pittura sia un’emanazione del Nest?). Poi un giorno ci siamo imbattuti (i nostri molti io e lei) in una mostra all’Hamburger Bahnhof di Berlino e lì è scattato qualcosa. La mostra era SECRET UNIVERSE III Morton Bartlett dove era esibita una serie di 15 bambole in semi-dimensioni-reali che il fotografo aveva costruito per uso privato all’inizio degli anni trenta. Nessuno conosceva l’esistenza di questo universo privato che è stato scoperto solo dopo la sua morte. Le bambole rappresentano dei bambini e si dice che l’artista li posizionasse in giro per la casa per compensare la mancanza di una vita affettiva e famigliare propria. Che tristezza. Ci siamo chiesti se non fosse una profanazione. Se non fosse una meschina e insensibile esposizione di panni sporchi a scopo commerciale. Ma poi ci siamo detti che no, oggi l’esposizione pubblica è sinonimo di onestà, di trasparenza, che in ogni caso anche se inconsapevoli siamo visti, spiati, osservati e mostrati in display. Il grande fratello non è più un fardello, è un dato di fatto, una palese banalità, un format televisivo.

Allora Fragogna si è fatta forza e ha detto: “Anch’io voglio un SECRET UNIVERSE alla Bahnhof !” del resto che cos’è uno scheletro dentro all’armadio senza un nutrito corollario di nidi di polvere? La logica di Fragogna non fa mai una piega, tutto casca a fagiuolo. Stiamo preparando tre mostre piuttosto importanti.

| SENSE OF RIDICULOUS

Art, like theology, is a well packaged fraud.

Philip K. Dick

Thetrue work of art is not, that one which is imposed without ambition and success and that comes from a genuine ability and a safe professional maturity?

Papa Giovanni Paolo II

Art without heart, spring without sun.

Libero Bovio

A GREAT CLOUD OF DUST

When we asked Fragogna why she had not exposed the Nest before, her answer is flowed without hesitation “Because I was ashamed.” She told us.

For many years Fragogna did not know what form the Nido would have taken. As we mentioned in the first chapter, Fragogna is an artist who mainly works with painting and visual art in general. Her pictorial research, in which we do not want to dig in here, is constituted by and through the elements of classical art: canvas, brushes, colors, paper, inks, pencils and clay.

The idea of bringing forward a parallel and hidden project which she did not quite know what to do with, gave her a sense of despair which sometimes could escape only through the explosions of her bodies framed (one can conjecture that the painting is an emanation of the Nest?). Then one day we came across in an exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and there something has clicked. The exhibition was SECRET UNIVERSE III Morton Bartlett where a series of 15 dolls in semi-real- dimensions that the photographer had built for private use at the beginning of the thirties was exhibited. No one knew the existence of this private universe that was discovered only after his death. The dolls represent children and it is said that the artist positioned them around the house to make up for the lack of a love and family life. How sad. We wondered if it was a desecration. If it was not a mean-spirited and insensitive exposure of dirty clothes for commercial purposes. But then we thought that no, the public display today is synonymous with honesty, transparency, and in any case, even if we are unknowingly watched, spied on, observed and shown in a display. The big brother is no longer a burden, it is a matter of fact, a blatant banality, a television format.

Then Fragogna has gathered courage and said: “I want a SECRET UNIVERSE at the Bahnhof too!”. At the end of the day what is a skeleton in the closet without a large corollary of nests of dust? The logic of Fragogna never makes a turn, everything falls to the bean (Fair’s fair). We are preparing three rather important exhibitions.

NEST OF DUST: PROJECT FOR THREE INSTALLATIONs
Wax, wood, epoxy, iron, fabric, hair, mixed media, dimentions variable (big stuff) Ill. 11

Il NIDO D’AMORE (di palo in frasca)

Poteva essere che l’artista Fragogna ci risparmiasse della visione romantica del Nido? Al contrario ci si chiede come abbia fatto a metterci 62 pagine a farselo venire in mente. Che il processo di zitellite abbia già cementificato gli organi, quali cervello e stomaco atti all’amore? A quanto pare, pare proprio di no.

Tre Odi al Nido D’Amore e Di Polvere

metro barbaro, strofa saffica

1.
Delle tue ondate di capelli Disciolti in delirante lussuria
Ho raccolto matasse di memoria Sotto al letto.

2.
“Non agitar le lenzuola” disse
– I suoi occhi rigati di pianto –
“L’antistaminico mi son scordata, morrò gaudente.”

3.
Non giudicate romantici versi Da tragico esistere dettati.
D’Amore e Polvere condannato Il nostro Nido.

THE NEST OF LOVE (jumping from topic to topic)

Could it be that the artist Fragogna spared us the romantic vision of the nest? On the contrary, one wonders how she managed to write 62 pages before having it popping to mind. Maybe the Old-spinster process has already cemented organs, such as brain and stomach acts to love? Apparently, it seems not, it hasn’t.

Three Odes to the Nest of Love and of Dust

free verse

1.
Waves your hair Dissolved in frantic lust
I picked up tangles of memory Under the bed.

2.
“Do not agitate the sheets,” she said
– Her eyes streaked with tears –
“The antihistamine I have forgotten, I’ll voluptuary die “

3.
Do not judge romantic verses From tragic existence dictated.
Of Love and Dust sentenced Our Nest.

IL NIDO EROTICO – PRURIGINE

Noi ti sentiamo fremere, lettore desideroso di stimoli che non ti accontenti dell’afflato romanzesco, che la poesia ti caria i denti. Noi ti percepiamo sotto la pelle e nel basso ventre che ti si sfrigolano e sfrittillano acari sottocutanei. Il morboso e peccaminoso combustibile interno, pulsione primaria, istinto ferino, ludibrio salmastro, eros scapigliato, germe vampiro, perversione oppiacea, eden vulcanico.

Ti pizzica il naso questo polverìo che scivola sulle braccia accarezzandoti la lanugine cutanea. Dalla testa in basso come un livello di acqua tiepida, fluida e morbida scende. Ti bagna. Cascata vischiosa.

Ti vogliamo così, maschio villoso, glabro, muscoloso, morbido e flaccido, forte e compatto, esuberante eretto, piegato mansueto. Ti vogliamo così, femmina calda, docile, aspra, algido dramma, tragico circo, delicata e titanica, aperta e chiusa. Combinati a piacere, con Noi fuori e dentro, in gruppo o singolo, accoppiato e senza regole, regolato dall’impulso. Annidati. Prolifica posture. Sii ciò che sei. Abbi il corpo che desideri, prendilo, affittalo, provalo, giocaci. Aggiungi opzioni, caricati, applicati, dacci briciole di cellule vive non temere le cellule morte, rigenerati. Sii giovane o vecchio, non avere età, non te ne curare, Noi ti prendiamo comunque, ti mescoliamo tra i capelli, i peli, i profili.

Ti siedi lì e aspetti, non sai bene di cosa, forse ne hai voglia, forse no. Noi non diciamo nulla, ti osserviamo, ti guardiamo, cominciamo a concupirti da lontano. Il nostro sguardo non ammette fraintendimenti, la brama è palpabile è spessa è fisica è ineludibile. Ancor prima che il Nostro corpo si connetta al tuo già l’onda dell’intenzione ti travolge come massa febbricitante e lenta, come un magma di cera cremosa bianco opaco ti sommerge ti inonda ti annega lo respiri col naso e con la bocca, penetra tutti i tuoi pori e ti riempie gli spazi vuoti. Sei tu nella tua medesima forma la Nostra forma e ogni movimento è unisono è complementare è armonico e perfetto.

Abbiamo mani ovunque e occhi e propaggini e cavità, ci adattiamo a te, qualsiasi cosa desideri. Ti rotoliamo agli angoli. Ti entriamo. Ti entriamo. Ti entriamo dentro. T’invadiamo aderendo con dolcezza e con forza. Come vuoi.

Ti accarezza ti frusta ti accarezza ti lecca ti sputa ti stringe ti soffoca ti rilascia ti abbandona ti colpisce ti pena ti tradisce ti è fedele per sempre
ti riempie ti riempie
ti riempie ti lascia entrare e ti manda via ti fa venire subito e ti fa aspettare ancora di più
di più
di più ti prende comunque ti vuole così.

Proprio così. Tu.

THE EROTIC NEST – ITCH

We feel you thrilled, reader eager of inducements. You are not happy with a sweet romance, a poetry that decay your teeth. We perceive you under Our skin in the lower abdomen and in you sizzle and tremble subcutaneous mites. The morbid and sinful internal fuel, primary drive, feral instinct, ridicule brackish, disheveled eros, vampire germ, opioid perversion, volcanic eden.

Your nose pinches in this cloud of dust that slips on your arms caressing the skin fluff. From the head down as a layer of warm water, fluid, soft falls. You are wet. Sticky waterfall.

We love you so, masculine, hairy, hairless, muscular, soft and flabby, strong and compact, exuberant, erect, meekly folded. We love you so, hot female, gentle, harsh, icy drama, tragic circus, delicate and titanic, opened and closed. Combined as desired, with Us inside and out, in group or individual, paired and without rules, governed by impulse. Nested. Prolific postures. Be what you are. Have the body you want, get it, rent it, try it, play with it. Add options, load, apply, give Us crumbs of alive cells do not fear the dead cells, regenerate yourself. Be young or old, have no age, you do not care, We take you anyway, We mix you with Our hair, the fur, the skinlines.

You sit there and wait, you don’t know exactly what for, maybe you feel like it, maybe not. We do not say anything, We watch you, We look at you, We are starting to covet you from afar. Our glance does not allow for misunderstandings, the longing is palpable is thicker is physics is inescapable. Even before that Our body connects to yours We already overwhelm you as the wave of the intention mass which is feverish and slow, like a wax and creamy magma, white opaque swamps you’ll flood. We will drown the breath through the nose and mouth, penetrates all your pores and fill in the blanks. It is you in your same shape and into Our shape. Every move is complementary and unison, it is harmonious and perfect.

We have hands and eyes everywhere and offshoots and cavities, We adapt to you, anything you want. We roll on you around the corners. We enter you. We enter you. We enter into you. We invade and conquer, adhering gently and firmly with you. As you wish.

Caresses you, whips caresses licks spits shakes suffocates you,
lets you down, hits you, cheating on you and being loyal to you forever fills you
fills you
fills you up and leaves you enter, sends you away and makes you immediately makes you await even more
more
more with you anyway wants you like this.

Just like that. You.

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

I libri di artisti sono libri o oggetti a forma di libro sulla foggia, configurazione e aspettofinito dei quali l’artista ha avuto un’elevata capacità di controllo; dove il libro è consideratocome opera d’arte in se stessa.

Stephen Bury

LA PROMOZIONE DEL NEST

Non molti hanno una chiara idea di cosa sia un Libro D’Artista. Il concetto sfugge anche agli artisti stessi, molto spesso.

Fragogna ha sempre amato i libri d’artista e ha collezionato nei suoi quaderni di appunti decine e decine di idee per possibili edizioni. Nest Of Dust è la sua prima produzione concreta. Mentre stiamo scrivendo il libro, direttamente su foglio InDesign perchè il libro è anche e soprattutto da considerarsi un’opera grafica, non sappiamo ancora se l’edizione limitata di 225 copie verrà effettivamente pubblicata.

Quest’operaatuttotondo non fugge neanche perun istante le regoledel concettuale. Nemmeno nella sua promozione. L’artista Fragogna, come molti artisti dell’epoca della crisi, non naviga nell’abbondanza dei mezzi propri, ma desidera ardentemente stampare l’opera su carta, almeno una. Abbiamo immaginato una piccola campagna di raccolta fondi come oggi va molto di moda e abbiamo lanciato la proposta di acquisto in prevendita di una o più copie del libro (in tre volumi) per la cifra di miseria (lasciatecelo dire) di dieci euro (esclusa spedizione) fino a raggiungere il numero di almeno ottanta (80) libri. Solo dopo aver raccolto il denaro ricavato dalla prevendita sarà possibile stampare il libro (in 225 copie) che verrà successivamente consegnato o inviato ai cari pre-acquirenti sostenitori. Ci sembra una buona idea.

| HUMORISM AND FATALITY

 “Artists’ books are books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself.”

Stephen Bury

THE SPONSORSHIP OF THE NEST

 Not many have a clear idea of what an artist’s book is. The concept also escapes the artists themselves, very often.

Fragogna has always loved art books and has collected in her notebooks dozens and dozens of ideas for possible issues. Nest Of Dust is her first concrete production. While we are writing the book, directly on a InDesign sheet (because the book is also and above all to be considered a graphic work) we do not know if the limited edition of 225 copies will actually be published.

This “in the round” work can not escape even for a moment the rules of the conceptual. Even in its promotion. The artist Fragogna, like many artists at the time of the crisis, does not sail in the abundance of her own means, but she longs to print the work on paper, at least one. We imagined a small fundraising campaign like today is very fashionable and we have launched a proposal to purchase in advance one or more copies of the book (in three volumes) for the sum of misery (let us say) of ten euro (excluding shipping) until reaching the number of at least eighty (80) books. Only after collecting the money from the booking we will go to print the book (in 225 copies) which will then be delivered or sent to the dear pre-buyers supporters. It seems a good idea.

BREVE INTERRUZIONE | MESSAGGIO PROMOZIONALE

 A questo punto la campagna è cozzata contro il piccolo scoglio della noia. Nel giro di una sola settimana siamo riusciti a piazzare quarantasei (46) copie solo via facebook (la nostra campagna è più un crew che un crow funding (certi giochi di parole sono intraducibili, non ce ne abbiate anche se un giochino tra folla e folli non guasterebbe) ma probabilmente il pubblico, già saturo di immagini promozionali in forma di “nido”, non legge più il testo della nostra promozione. Però non siamo ancora alla frutta, anzi, oggi abbiamo cominciato la giornata con l’aperitivo. L’offerta del giorno è: dieci euro per due spritz o per un Nest? Ma il Nest include i due spritz! Tà-Dààn! Cosa non si deve fare. Vi offriamo due spritz perchè acquistiate un libro di dieci euro (prezzo speciale di prevendita) che include già:

• Tre volumi di cui uno di testi, uno di fotografie originali Fragogna e uno di immagini (disegni, stampe ecc), per non contare che tutti i tre volumi di per sè sono un’opera grafica di non poco livello;
• numero di edizione e firma autografa dell’artista Fragogna;
• UN DISEGNO ORIGINALE fatto a mano su una pagina del Vol.3 STUFF;
• due spritz;
• e sicuramente qualche altra prova d’amore e di entusiasmo che si accumulerà tra qui e il momento della consegna.

(Fragogna ha già dato via gli organi in un progetto precedente, vi preghiamo di avere pazienza.)

(Un giorno queste edizioni costeranno molto, molto di più… credo.)

Ci permettiamo inoltre di fare qui sotto (Ill. 9 e 10) un esempio di Libro D’Artista (noto) così, per fornirvi un metro di misura. Fragogna non sarà al momento paragonabile a Joseph Beuys per valore di mercato ma Fragogna ha ancora alcuni anni di vita in fronte a sè e una caparbia testa dura.

Joseph Beuys, Beuys und Wolfgang Feelisch, 1972

Photograph copyright Archiv Feelisch; photo-manipulation in order to avoid the copyright, trick, Fragogna 2013.

Joseph Beuys signing copies of “Intuition” in 1972, together with Wolfgang Feelisch, who published the multiple.

Ill. 9

SHORT INTERRUPTION | ADVERTISING MESSAGE

At this point the campaign is colliding against the small rock of boredom. Within one week we managed to place forty-six (46) copies only via Facebook (our campaign is no longer a crowd but a crew funding) but probably the public, already saturated with promotional images in the form of “nest”, no longer reads the text of Our promotion. We are not yet to the fruit though, indeed, today we started the day with an aperitif. The deal of the day is: ten euro for a Nest or for 2 spritz? But the Nest includes the two spritz! Tadaan! We offer you two spritz so that you purchase a book of ten euro (special pre-sale) which already includes:

• Three volumes of which one of texts, one of original photographs and one of images (drawings, prints, etc.), not to mention that all three volumes themselves are not a so bad graphic work;
• Edition numbered and signature of the artist Fragogna;
• AN ORIGINAL DRAWING made by hand on a page of the Vol.3 STUFF;
• Two spritz;
• And surely some other proof of love and enthusiasm that will be accumulated between here and the time of delivery.

(Fragogna has already given away the organs in a previous project, please be patient.)

(One day these issues will cost much, much more … I hope.)

Here below we would like also to do (Ill. 9 and 10) an example of the artist’s book of a known artist so, to provide a yardstick. Fragogna is probably not be comparable to Joseph Beuys at market value but Fragogna still has a few years of life in front of her and a stubborn hard head as well.

Joseph Beuys (German 1921-1986) Institution ,1972; estimate $1000-1500
Ill.10

L’opera incomprensibile

è interpretabile.

CHI SI E’ INVENTATO GLI STANDARD DEL CONCETTUALE?

Pensa che Botticelli era geloso di Michelangelo. Pensa che Botticelli era un po’ più vecchio (30 anni di differenza) e aveva fatto il suo tempo alla corte dei Medici però immaginati l’ego dell’artista di corte rimpiazzato dal giovincello di belle speranze. Pensa che pure Leonardo aveva avuto ragione di scornarsi con Michelangelo, anche Leonardo era più vecchio (23 anni) e seppure il maestro di Vinci non avesse nulla da invidiare al giovine Buonarroti per una serie di sfortunate circostanze le faccende di quest’ultimo qualche volta gli si incastravano tra le gambe. E pure Raffaello, che gli era di otto anni più giovane, quando si trattava del grande ispiratore, non se la passava poi tanto in scioltezza, come si dice. (Informazioni opinabili rubate a Superquark)

Questo per dire cosa. Per dire che anche quando gli artisti erano quattro gatti appena pure si graffiavano ispidi per quella lisca di pesce che è la fama, l’onore, il pregio, il prestigio, la gloria e la supremazia.

Oggi cosa succede? Succede che siamo milioni! E ce ne dobbiamo inventare una al giorno per mantenere la parvenza di status di IO C’E’. La maggior parte di noi, e parlo solo dei professionisti (cioè gli artisti-artisti che fanno arte-arte) perchè altrimenti non c’è più fine, è tagliata completamente fuori dal mercato main stream però cerca e trova il modo di tirare avanti, perchè non ne può fare a meno, perchè non c’è alternativa, perchè questo è quello che siamo, quello che sappiamo fare, quello che vogliamo fare, il nostro lavoro.

Ci sentiamo dire che siamo fortunati perchè facciamo quello che ci piace, che ci “divertiamo”, che non facciamo niente tutto il giorno. Che siamo fortunati lo ripeto perchè è bello sentirselo dire quando subito dopo ti senti chiedere: “…e per vivere come fai?” Però è vero, siamo fortunati. Perchè abbiamo capito chi siamo e andiamo avanti lo stesso e se ci guardiamo indietro non abbiamo rimpianti.

E poi siamo fortunati perchè qualcuno si è inventato gli standard dell’arte concettuale contemporanea!

Si perchè l’incomprensibile è interpretabile. Cosa vuol dire? Vuol dire che abbiamo inventato un sistema intellettuale per tirare a campare. Vuol dire che abbiamo imparato a giustificare le operazioni speculative con le quali noi, artisti puri pregni di ideale, ci compromettiamo al misero scopo di procacciare il denaro che ci permette di pagare affitti e vita, che ci permette di pagare la possibilità di lavorare. L’arte concettuale è un’arte complementare. Il lavoro sporco. Il paycheck. Mi spiego meglio. Tutti gli artisti possono fare arte concettuale perchè l’arte concettuale, per quel che è diventata, non esiste.

The incomprehensible work

is interpretable.

WHO INVENTED THE CONCEPTUAL STANDARDS?

Do you believe that Botticelli was jealous of Michelangelo? Do you believe that Botticelli was a bit older (30 years difference) and had had its days at the Medici court, however, imagine the ego of the artist replaced by a youngster with high hopes. Do you believe that Leonardo as well had reason to off worst with Michelangelo, Leonardo also was older (23 years old) and even if the master of Vinci had nothing to envy to the young Buonarroti due to a serie of unfortunate circumstances the affairs of the latter sometimes got stucked between the legs of the older. And yet Raffaello (sorry I don’t believe in the translation of the names), who was eight years younger, when it was about the great inspirator, he wasn’t that much at ease, as they say. (Questionable information stolen from Superquark)

What do we want to say with this? We want to say that even when the artists were just four cats, they scratched each other for that fish bone that is fame, honor, prestige, glory and supremacy.

By the way, wouldn’t this be a great text if there were a proper translation?

Now what happens? It happens that we are millions! And there we have to invent every day something in order to maintain the semblance of the status of I EXIST. Most of us, and I speak only about professionals (I mean: the artists-artists who make art- art because otherwise there ‘d be no end), are cut completely out of the main stream market, however, we seek and find a way to get by, because we can not do anything else, because there is no alternative, because this is what we are, what we do, what we want to do. Our job.

We are told that we are lucky because we do what we like, that we “have fun”, that we do not do anything all day long. I repeat that we are lucky because it is good to hear it when you are immediately asked after: “…and what do you do to live?” But it’s true, we’re lucky. Because we know who we are and we go ahead anyway and if we look back we have no regrets.

And YES we’re lucky because someone has invented the standards of the conceptual contemporary art!

Yes because the incomprehensible work is interpretable. What does it mean? It means that we have invented an intellectual system for pulling a living. It means that we have learned to justify speculative operations through which we, artists steeped in pure ideals, we began to compromise in order to procure the money that allows us to pay rents and life, which allows us to pay for the chance to work.

Conceptual art is a complementary art. The dirty job. The paycheck. Let me explain. All the artists can produce conceptual art because, for what conceptual art has become, it does not exist.

Non sto dicendo che l’arte concettuale degli anni sessanta non esista. E’ esistita, e aveva un senso, è ovvio. Io credo che Joseph Kosuth sia un grande teorico e artista e che lui e la sua scuola abbiano dato molto alla storia dell’arte ma non è questo il punto delle mie considerazioni. Voglio riportare dei semplici fatti:

Nel 1968 Kosuth pubblica il testo “L’arte dopo la filosofia” dove descrive l’arte concettuale degli anni sessanta.

Nel 1975 pubblica l’articolo “1975”* e da qui estraggo solo una frase: “Com’è tipico dei più recenti “movimenti” artistici, anche l’arte concettuale ha avuto una vita relativamente breve.” Poi lui continua l’articolo spiegando come si sta sviluppando che pieghe sta prendendo e azzarda delle previsioni su quello che sarà. Se ti va di leggere il libro io lo consiglio, ne vale assolutamente la pena.

Quello che mi preme sottolineare è che Kosuth ha scritto il secondo articolo solo sette anni dopo il precedente e già afferma che il movimento dell’arte concettuale è “finito”. Allora io mi domando come mai oggi nel 2013, trentotto anni dopo, l’arte concettuale continua ad essere propinata al di fuori del suo contesto originale?

La mia risposta è quella proposta sopra: l’arte concettuale contemporanea è o potrebbe essere l’escamotage che ci permette di pagare l’affitto, in teoria. Vediamo come. L’arte ufficiale è diventata il mercato dell’arte, l’arte che si vende. L’arte-arte si fa in studio e non segue le regole di mercato. Tutti gli artisti-artisti fanno arte-arte. Tutti gli artisti-artisti possono, se vogliono, fare arte concettuale come la si intende nel contemporaneo.

Ora, il mercato dell’arte, che pensaaiguadagniper natura intrinseca, sta già sfruttando la gallina dalle uova d’oro concettuale dagli anni sessanta. Le più importanti gallerie, musei, biennali, triennali e quinquennali sguazzano nell’incomprensibile mare del concetto liquido ermetico. Te lo danno a bere zuccherandolo di intellettualismi farciti di tomi dalla terminologia ostica ai più. Te lo vendono. Il mercato dell’arte pullula di artisti-artistoidi che spacciano il bicchiere mezzo vuoto per mezzo vuoto.

Perchè non cavalcare lo tsunami in cresta anche noi, artisti-artisti dell’abisso? Sarà sempre meglio che andar a lavar piatti no? E allora facciamolo! Risolviamo l’estrema crisi della crisi perenne dell’artista-artista che non vende perchè spesso l’acquirente danaroso è un pargolo approssimativo. Noi che siamo artisti-artisti diamo a prescindere un plusvalore al bicchiere mezzo vuoto perchè la nostra dote innata di artista-artista trasforma l’opera vuota in un opera col senso del vuoto. Non didascalica ma percettiva. Il progetto “Nest Of Dust” non è altro che questo. Con tutto l’impegno messo per farlo diventare un fake alla fine la qualità è innegabile e tu ti sei portato a casa un oggetto dal valore esponenziato rispetto al prezzo che hai pagato. Complimenti a te e mannaggia a me. Però se venderò tutte le 225 copie non solo pagherò la stampa delle stesse ma pagherò anche due mesi d’affitto. Cosa non si fa…

I’m not saying that conceptual art of the sixties does not exist. It existed indeed, and it even had a sense, of course. I believe that Joseph Kosuth is a great theorist and artist and that he and his school have given much to the history of art, but that’s not the point of my consideration. I want to show some simple facts:

In 1968 Kosuth public the text “Art after Philosophy” where he describes the conceptual art of the sixties.

In 1975 he published the article “1975”* and from that article I’m extracting only one sentence: “As is typical of most recent ”movements“ of art, conceptual art also had a relatively short life.” Then he continues the article explaining how it is developing, which direction it is taking and he predicts about what it will be. If you like to read the book I would recommend it, it is absolutely worth it.

What I want to emphasize is that Kosuth wrote the second article only seven years after the previous one and he already states that the movement of conceptual art is “finished”. So I wonder why today in 2013, thirty-eight years later, conceptual art continues to be dished up out of its original context?

My answer is that proposed above: contemporary conceptual art is or could be the trick that allows us to pay the rent, in theory. Let’s see how. The official art has become the art market, art that sells itself. The art-art is made in the studio and it doesn’t follow the rules of the market. All artists-artists make art-art. All artists-artists may, if they wish, to make conceptual art as it is understood in the contemporary world.

Now, the art market, that has the function to “gain” for intrinsic nature, is already exploiting the goose that lays the conceptual golden eggs from the sixties. The most important galleries, museums, biennials, three and five-annuals wallow in the incomprehensible sea of liquid hermetic concept. They give it to you to swallow stuffing it of intellectualism and with tomes full of tricky terminology. They sell it to you. The art market is full of pseudo-artists who peddle the glass half empty as half empty.

Why don’t we ride the tsunami on the ridge too, artists-artists of the abyss? It will always be better than to go to wash dishes right? Then let’s do it! We’ll solve the extreme crisis of the perennial crisis of the artist-artist who does not sell because often the buyer is a wealthy approximate babe. We, artists-artists give an added value regardless of the glass as half empty because our innate gift of artist-artist transforms the work into an empty work with a sense of emptiness. Not didactic but perceptive. The “Nest Of Dust” is nothing more than this. With all the efforts made to make it a fake in the end the quality is undeniable and you have brought home an object with an exponential value than the price you paid. Congratulations to you and shame on me. But if I will sell all the 225 copies I will not only pay the printing but I will also pay two months’ rent. So you see, it’s a conceptual paycheck artwork…

 
*Arte concettuale: un fallimento? da J. Kosuth, L’arte dopo la filosofia, costa&nolan, 2000

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

Guai a quelli che fanno traduzioni letterali, e traducendo ogni parola snervano il significato.È ben questo il caso di dire che la lettera uccide e lo spirito vivifica.

Voltaire, Lettere filosofiche, 1734

L’umorismoè la prima qualità che va perduta in una lingua straniera.

Virginia Woolf, Il lettore comune, 1925

Come accennato nella Intro a sorpresa n°1 | LINGUISTIC INTRO la versione inglese del libro è stata tradotta da Google a gratis. Lo sforzo dell’autore è stato quello di sistemarne leggermente la struttura senza stravolgere troppo il senso ritorto del testo di modo che i lettori inglesi non perdessero la pazienza dopo appena un paragrafo di incomprensibili intrichi. Non so se questo sforzo abbia ottenuto i risultati sperati. Ma anche se incomprensibile il testo inglese ha il suo perchè.

Il testo inglese è un contenuto grafico. La scrittura ottenuta per mezzo della traduzione sistematica di Google potrebbe essere definita come “creativa”. La scrittura creativa della reinterpretazione informatica dei codici tramite un calcolatore. La scrittura creativa della matematica informatica. Il testo inglese astrae e trascende il testo originale (italiano) trasformandolo in una scrittura grafica. In un testo poetico. La grammatica di Google è arbitraria a Google.

Il lettore deve leggere con i sensi. Deve essere in grado di scardinare i luoghi comuni e le congetture e si deve lasciar prendere dal suono del surreale e del ridicolo. Il testo inglese è un secondo testo leggibile come suono anche dal lettore italiano che non lo capisce ma che lo canta.

Il traduttore Google è un traduttore approssimativo. Chi usa questo strumento quindi se non è uno strumento di precisione? Il pubblico, il lettore approssimativo del web. Quello stesso utente, di cui parlavamo nel capitolo precedente, siamo tutti noi. Utilizziamo il traduttore Google per capire per grandi linee il senso di un articolo di Le Monde o dell’Economist, traduciamo i messaggi di stato di qualche persona che vorremmo conoscere virtualmente in Cina o in Uruguay.

| THE PHILOSOPHY OF MISTRANSLATION or ON APPROXIMATION 2

Woe to those who are literal translations, and translating each word enervate the meaning. Well this is the case to say that the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Voltaire, Philosophical letters, 1734

The humor is the first quality that is lost in a foreign language.

Virginia Woolf, The common reader, 1925

As mentioned in the Intro a sorpresa n°1 | LINGUISTIC INTRO the English version of the book has been translated by Google for free. The effort of the author was to adjust the structure slightly, without changing or twisting the meaning of the mistranslated text, so that English readers would not lose patience after just a paragraph of incomprehensible entanglements. I do not know if this effort has achieved the expected results. But even if incomprehensible, the English text has its own why.

The English text is a graphic and conceptual content. Writing obtained using the systematic translation of Google could be defined as a “creative translation.” The informatics reinterpretation of the creative writing through a computer code. The creative writing of mathematics computer science. The English text abstracts and transcends the original text (Italian) turning it into a graphic writing, a poetic text. The grammar of Google is arbitrary to Google.

The reader must read with the senses. S/he must be able to undermine the stereotypes and guesswork and s/he has to let go to the sound of the surreal and the ridiculous. The English text is a second text readable as a sound also by the Italian reader who does not understand it but that can sings it.

The Google translator is an approximate translator. Who are those who use this tool even if it is not a precision instrument? The audience, the approximate reader of the web. That same user, as we were talking about in the previous chapter, is all of us. We use Google translator to understand in broad terms the meaning of an article in Le Monde or The Economist, we translate the status messages of some person which we would like to know virtually in China or Uruguay.

Traduciamo i pareri medici sui valori alterati del sangue ancor prima del consulto con lo specialista. Incubiamo. Il traduttore Google è in realtà inutile allo scopo di capire integralmente il testo. Il traduttore Google ci accenna. E noi abbiamo capito. Non ci serve altro, ci dobbiamo già spostare sulla prossima pagina. Non c’è tempo. Ma abbiamo capito male.

L’artista Fragogna usa Google come un medium per interpretare, per offrire una visione di testo “altra”. Come un distorsore per la mente. Come un filtro stralciato.

E’ così che il testo si trasforma nel suo contenuto, la concettualizzazione del Nido Di Polvere. Il testo tradotto diventa il Nido Di Polvere. Il nido di capelli, pelle, resti, pensieri, idee, relazioni, intrecci diventa un matrix di simboli grafici, la nebula si sfalda e si concretizza in grafemi che compongono la stessa immagine ma la reinterpretano sgrammaticamente.

Il lettore italiano può leggere a sua volta il testo inglese perchè nell’incomprensione pressochè totale può perdere il contatto e disperdersi nel pulviscolo. Il lettore inglese può fare lo stesso col testo italiano che, sebbene scritto con una relativa correttezza grammaticale, è comunque incomprensibile a livello logico.

Il Google translator è inutile. Il Google translator è concettualmente necessario. Il testo concettuale è comunque incomprensibile. Il testo concettuale è inutile.

LA METATRADUZIONE, UN PROGETTO CASTRATO

Fragogna si spinge oltre, ovviamente. Per creare un universo pulviscolare, una broda primordiale, un miasma fecondo di possibilità inconoscibili è necessario superare il limite. Dal testo originale semi-logico al testo tradotto arbitrariamente il passo successivo è il ritorno della traduzione al suo codice linguistico di partenza.
Il traduttore Google traduce dall’italiano all’inglese all’italiano.
Un volo sul trapezio pieno di contenuto simbolico. La metatraduzione.

Il progetto originale del libro di testi di Nest Of Dust doveva presentare il testo inglese in prima traduzione e il testo italiano in metatraduzione. Ci doveva essere poi un fascicoletto a parte col testo italiano originale e una buona traduzione inglese. Purtroppo per questioni squisitamente pecuniarie non è stato possibile realizzare il “fascicoletto” ma speriamo che in futuro un critico illuminato, un mecenate senza remore, un Gagosian a caso ci dia la possibilità di completare l’opera ahimè storpia. Esempio di “meta” in tre passaggi:

Il concetto ha senso se il senso è sensato.

↓ ↓ ↓

The concept makes sense if the sense is sensible.

↓ ↓ ↓

Il concetto ha un senso se il senso è ragionevole.

We translate medical opinions on the altered blood values even before consultation with a specialist. We incubate nightmares. This translator is actually useless in order to fully understand the text. This translator gives hints. And we get the meaning. We do not need to deepen, we must already move to the next page. There is no time. But we got it wrong.

The artist Fragogna uses Google as a medium to interpret, to offer a vision of an-other text. A distortion for the mind. A written-off filter.

In this way the text is transformed in its content, the conceptualization of the Nest Of Dust. The translated text becomes the Nest Of Dust. The nest of hair, skin, ruins, thoughts, ideas, relationships, plots becomes a matrix of graphics, the nebula falls apart and takes the form of graphemes that compose the same image but reinterprets it grammatically incorrect.

The Italian reader can read the English text just as well because in an almost total incomprehension s/he may lose contact and be dispersed in the dust.
The English reader can do the same with the Italian text which, although written with a relative grammatical correctness, it is incomprehensible at a logic level.

The Google translator is useless. The Google translator is conceptually necessary. The conceptual text is still incomprehensible. The conceptual text is useless.

THE METATRANSLATION, A CASTRATED PROJECT

Fragogna goes further, of course. To create a dusty universe, a primordial broth, a miasma of fruitful unknowable possibilities is necessary to exceed the limit. From the original semi-logical to the arbitrarily translated text the next step is to return to its initial linguistic code of translation.
The Google Translator translates from Italian to English to Italian.
A flight on the trapeze full of symbolic content. The metatranslation.

The original draft of the book of texts of the Nest Of Dust Project was supposed to present the first translation into English text and the text in Italian in metatranslation. Then there had to be a booklet in part with the original Italian text and a good English translation. Unfortunately for purely pecuniary issues it has not been possible to achieve the “booklet” but we hope that in the future an enlighened critic, a patron without hesitation, a random Gagosian will give us the opportunity to complete the work alas crippled.
Example of “meta” in three steps:

the concept makes sense if the sense is meaningful.

↓ ↓ ↓

il concetto ha senso se il senso è significativo.

↓ ↓ ↓

the concept makes sense if the meaning is significant.

Barbara Fragongna, fragment from Nest of Dust, Book 3

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

Nessuno poi si è più chiesto: “Ma l’artista sa eseguire?”

Luciano Fabro, Arte torna arte, Einaudi, 1999

Ce l’hanno data parecchio a bere con quella storia del professionista altamente specializzato. All’americana. Ognuno sa fareuna cosa sola, ma la sa fare BENISSIMO (per esempio: Filtri dell’aria. Ill. 5). Quando uno poi sa fare una cosa sola benissimo, dopo un po’ si annoia e ha voglia di variare e siccome è in grado di dare giudizi dettagliati e pertinenti su uno specifico argomento che eleva gli standard delle sue discussioni allora crede di essere in grado di dare giudizi altamente specializzati anche su altre cose, perchè no, comincerà in principio ad emettere verdetti sugli argomenti correlati la sua “materia” (per esempio: il movimento delle masse di aria atmosferica usando i termini “ciclonica” ed “anticiclonica” perchè riempiono bene la bocca Ill. 6) e poi, notando che il suo pubblico si lascia bambasciare dalla scioltezza giaculatoria allora si allargherà, prima timidamente e poi pomposamente a panzer anche su tutto ciò che da lui stesso è conosciuto per estensione o assonanza (per esempio: i ciclopi e i ciclostili. Ill. 7 e 8). Catena associativa: filtro dell’aria – aria atmosferica – masse cicloniche – ciclopi – ciclostili.

Moltiplichiamo questa formula per tutti gli esseri umani che si autocensiscono degni di dettar giudizio ed otterremo il WikiWorld. D’altra parte oggi tutti (nelle cosidette società cilvili) possono avere un’opinione dentro alla propria testa e la testa è un net di impulsi e il personal computer o il laptop sono un’estensione di memoria, una memoria esterna per dire, quindi un’estensione del cervello, della mente, della persona insomma. Queste opinioni senza neanche rendersene conto diventano un pubblico “dominio”, siamo animali socievoli quindi condividiamo. Siamo esseri umani educati quindi “twittiamo” nozionismi riassuntivi.

Tutto sommato, finchè un’opinione non viene smentita, discussa o criticata, quell’opinione può elevarsi alla casta ideale di presunta Verità. Per smentire un’opinione su di un preciso argomento a caso bisogna essere specializzati oppure correlati. Possiamo correggere le opinioni con altre opinioni, mitigare o inasprire una storia, credere ciecamente a qualsiasi assunto sparato con convinzione o non credere più a niente perchè tanto è tutto inventato.

Amiamo l’approssimazione perchè ci regala risposte veloci, magari immagini così non siamo costretti a leggere, se è un video anche meglio. Non è necessario smentire perchè tanto tra due minuti te lo sei dimenticato. Oppure lo racconti ad amici e parenti come dato di fatto da raccontare a catena. Di Sant’Antonio.

In fin dei conti il discorso sulla specializzazione si regge su piedi di sabbia. Non è più importante sapere ma è importante “sapere che almeno uno di noi sa”. Non è necessario avere una memoria interna (conoscenza) perchè Google (e simili) ha tutte le risposte in un clic. I nostri cervelli sono tubi dove scorrono flussi di dati imprecisi che vengono selezionati, visualizzati e cestinati. Poco o niente mette radice.

Per fortuna.

| AS YOU “VIEW” ME or ON APPROXIMATION 1

Nobody anymore asks: “But the artist knows how to make?”

Luciano Fabro, Arte torna arte, Einaudi, 1999

We have been teased enough with that story of the highly skilled professional. American style. Everyone knows how to do one thing, but very WELL (for example: air filters. Ill. 5). When one knows how to do one thing very well, after a while s/he is bored and wants to change the topic. Since s/he is able to make detailed and relevant judgments on a specific topic that raises the standards of its discussions then s/he believes to be able to be highly qualified to make judgments on other things, why not? S/he starts in the beginning to issue verdicts on matters related to his/her “matter” (for example: the mass movement of atmospheric air using the terms “cyclonic” and “anticyclonic” because they fill well the mouth. Ill. 6) and then, noticing that his/her audience is amazed with the fluency ejaculation of his/her speech then it will expand, at first timidly and then pompously on all that s/he him/herself knows for extension or assonance (for example: Cyclops and the mimeograph (ciclostile). Ill. 7-8). Associative chain: air filter – atmospheric air – cyclonic masses – Cyclops – mimeograph/ciclostile in italian.

Multiply this formula to all human beings who deserve to dictate judgment and we will get the Wikiworld. On the other hand today all of us (in the so-called civil society) can have an opinion in our own head. The head is a net of pulses and the personal computer or laptop are an extension of memory, an external memory, the extension of the brain, of the mind, the person/individual itself. These opinions, without even realizing it, become a“public domain”. We are social animals therefore we share. We are humans so we“tweet/ twit” resumptive notionalisms.

All in all, as long as an opinion is not invalidated, discussed or criticized, that opinion can rise to the ideal caste of a presumed Truth. To rebut an opinion on a specific topic you need to be specialized or related. We can correct the opinions with other opinions, mitigate or exacerbate a story, believe blindly in any matter given with conviction or not believe in anything anymore because so much is all made up.

We love the approximation because it gives us quick answers, or better images, so maybe we are not forced to read (a video to watch would be even better). It is not necessary to refuse the topic because in two minutes you’ve already forgotten anyway. Or you tell the stories to friends and family as they would be assured facts, as in a spoken tradition, a chain. A Saint Anthony’ chain letter.

After all, the talk about specialization is built on sandy feet. It is not important anymore to “know” (to have the knowledge) but it is important to “know that at least one of us knows.” You don’t need to have an internal memory (knowledge) because Google (and similars) has all the answers in one click. Our brains are tubes flowing with streams of inaccurate data that are selected, displayed, and trashed. Little or nothing takes root.

Luckily.

Ill. 5 Air filter

Ill. 6 Atmospheric pressure

Ill. 7 Ciclostile

L’artista si fa sintesi e specchio di demenza sociale. Si presta a utilizzare lo stesso linguaggio povero e secco, riciclato e ricopiato. Prende pezzetti di “roba” e li assembla, sfrutta il compiacimento del pubblico che riconoscendo le immagini si esalta tronfio e saturo di empatia. E’ l’epoca del collage. Ogni composizione è collage. Copia e incolla. Ai ritornelli lassisti del tutto è già fatto e tutto è gia detto ci si adagia fannulloni. Aperitivo alla mano e tran-tran. L’artista è globale. Non c’è distinzione Est-Ovest o Nord-Sud nel mondo dell’arte main o minor stream che sia.

Come tu mi visualizzi (VIEWi) è come io sono. Io sono il mio profilo su Facebook, il mio portfolio online, la mia presenza net è la mia immagine in società. Sono quello che dico di essere e posso essere tutto quello che dico, posso aver fatto tutto quello che ho detto. Posso produrre le prove con Photoshop, se sono uno bravo posso addirittura produrre delle prove inconfutabili con Photoshop.

Ill. 8 Cyclops

The artist becomes a synthesis and mirror of social dementia. The artist lends her/himself to use the same language, poor and dry, recycled and recopied. S/he takes bits of “stuff” and assembles them, takes advantage of the complacency of the public which recognizes the images exalting itself in a pompous and full of empathy state. It is the age of collage. Each composition is a collage. Copy and paste. To the laxist chorus of “everything is already done” and “everything is already said” we lie down as slackers. Drink in hand and routine. The artist is global. There is no distinction between East-West or North-South in the world of main or lower stream art, whatever.

As you view (visualize) me is how I am. I am my profile on Facebook, my online portfolio, my net presence is my image in society. I am what I’ve said I am and I can be everything I pretend to be, I have done what I’ve said I’ve done. I can produce the evidence with Photoshop, if I am a good one I can even produce irrefutable evidence with Photoshop.

Il tuo essere approssimativo mi permettere di essere un real fake, tu non mi metti in discussione perchè non ne hai motivo, ti piace credere alle prime due righe, non leggi nemmeno tutto il testo, già dall’incipit hai capito di cosa si tratta (se sei arrivato a leggere fin qui probabilmente sei sempre la mia mamma, amore di madre che si sorbisce sto’ pacco).

Il pubblico mi desidera pazzo, il gallerista mi brama esotico, il critico mi vuole ermetico. Io sono tutto ciò che mi vuoi. Se mi vuoi morto, posso essere morto. E poi tornare in vita come Bobby di Dallas ma non come Gesù.

B. Fragogna, 3rd Millennium Phenomena Project, Cover Letter III, 2013

Your being approximate allows me to be a real fake, you do not question me because you do not have any reason to do it, you like to believe in the first two lines, you do not even read all the text, right from the incipit you understand what it is all about (if you’ve read this far you’re probably my mother, a mother’s love that is sipping this bitter juice).

The public desires me if I’m crazy mad, the gallery owner longs for me being exotic, the critic wants me hermetic. I am everything you want me to be. If you want me dead, I may be dead. And then I will come back to life as Bobby in Dallas but not as Jesus.

B. Fragogna, 3rd Millennium Phenomena Project, Cover Letter II, 2013

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

Quando nel lontano 1996 cominciai a pensare al progetto “Nido di Polvere” mai avrei immaginato che si sarebbe trasformato in un “progetto di vita”. Mai avrei creduto di possedere la costanza per perseverare su di un tanto controverso soggetto. Eppure eccomi qui, dopo 17 anni, a metterelo nero su bianco, ad esporre per la prima volta ad un vasto pubblico un segreto che ho custodito gelosamente per anni.

B.F.

La casa era piena di cianfrusaglie che Barbara raccoglieva in giro e che accumulava, accumulava e non riusciva a buttare via. Mi ricordo mensole piene da sembrare di essere ad un mercato delle pulci. La polvere che si accumulava ovunque era impossibile da debellare eppure io avevo sempre lo strofinaccio in mano…

Testimonianza di una delle Sante Donne

Io ad un certo punto volevo sbatterla fuori di casa ma l’altra Santa Donna non me l’ha permesso…

Testimonianza della seconda Santa Donna

Cosa fa l’artista? Come agisce la sua interazione col soggetto Nido? Lo fotografa, lo cataloga, lo documenta, lo colleziona e in fine, lo “sintetizza”. Fragogna lavora, studia, approfondisce dal 1996. Noi seguiamo l’artista dai suoi esordi e ne conosciamo intimamente i percorsi, le fasi, le frustrazioni e le vittorie.

In un’intervista del 2008 ci espone le sue perplessità: “Non so, a questo punto ho raccolto centinaia di fotografie su pellicola che immagino di dover digitalizzare prima che sia troppo tardi. Ho comperato finalmente una piccola compatta digitale e ho deciso di dare il ben servito all’analogico ma nel giro di un paio di mesi ho prodotto la stessa quantità di scatti degli ultimi dodici anni. Questo fatto trasborda il mio “discorso” (mima le virgolette con le dita) su di un altro piano estetico. Mi sono chiesta se il Nido ne avrebbe risentito. Ma poi ho osservato empiricamente che il Nido continuava a fare i suoi giri e ad esibirsi nelle sue evoluzioni noncurante del meccanismo interno di quel parallelepipedo metallico al quale io davo esageratamente troppa importanza. Non è il come ma è quello che si vuole dire. E il Nido diceva sotto il termosifone, tra i cavi elettrici, tra gli scatoloni e io registravo e continuo a registrare le sue volontà.”[i]

Si desume da queste parole un grande rispetto nei confronti del Nido.

| IN PROGRESS FOR 17 YEARS

When back in 1996 I began to think about the project” Nest Of Dust“ I never imagined that it would turn into a ”life project“. I never thought to possess the persistence to persevere on a subject so controversial. Yet here I am, after 17 years, putting it in black and white, exhibiting it for the first time to a wide audience. A secret that I have treasured for years.

B.F.

The house was full of junk that Barbara gathered around and accumulated & accumulated. She could not throw it away. I remember shelves full as to appear to be at a flea market. The dust that accumulated wherever it was impossible to eradicate and yet I always had a reg in my hand …

Testimony of one of the Holy Women

At one point I wanted to throw her out of the house but the other Holy Woman did not allow me …

Testimony of the second Holy Women

What does the artist do? How does she act her interaction with the subject Nest? She photographs, catalogs, documents it, she collects it and in the end, she “synthesizes” it. Fragogna works, studies, deepens since 1996. We follow the artist from her beginnings, and we know intimately her paths, steps, frustrations and victories.

In an interview in 2008 she exposes her doubts to us: “I do not know, at this point I have collected hundreds of photographs on film that I imagine I have to scan before it is too late. I finally bought a small compact digital camera and I decided to give the well-served to analog but within a couple of months I have produced the same amount of shots as the last twelve years. This fact transships my “speech” (mimes quotes with fingers) to another aesthetic level. I wondered if the Nest would suffer. But then I have observed empirically that the Nest continued to make its rounds and to perform in its evolution heedless of the internal mechanism of the rectangular metal box to which I gave too much exaggerated importance. It’s not about how but what you want to say. And the Nest says: under the radiator, between the wires, through the boxes and I am recording and going on recording its will. “[i]

A great respect for the Nest may be inferred from these words.

LA SCELTA STILISTICA DEL NIDO

 A rigor di coerenza Fragogna avrebbe potuto usare un termine più appropriato. Grumo, farragine, groppo, coagulo, gnocco, massa, tartaro, accozzaglia, ammasso, ammucchiata, babele, babilonia, confusione, congerie, fascio, fastello, intrico, mescolanza, mucchio, ridda, nodo, nodulo, bolo, crosta, incrostazione, sedimento. Ci siamo capiti.

Ognuno dei termini sopraelencati però si preclude in accezione negativa. Fragogna vuole discutere il disordine ed il caos nel loro equilibrio cosmico bilanciando come in un sofisticato yin e yang i poli opposti. Il nido infatti ci rimanda di primo acchito al calore, alla madre, all’accoglienza se pensiamo al mondo ornitologico ma se ci soffermiamo sul concetto di nido come “tana” l’associazione più spontana nido- tana non è forse il nido di serpi, il sangue freddo? E’ così che simbolicamente ci possiamo figurare un’idea di nido-taoistico.

Ma l’artista Fragogna è europea. Dai suoi fondamenti culturali non si pescano perle orientali ma piuttosto si riesumano i resti di antiche civiltà mediterranee, prevalentemente greche e romane e quindi apollinee e dionisiache, oppure nordeuropee e quindi tartare, barbare. La sua mitologia è archologica e quindi polverosa. Il suo nido è una nebulosa, una galassia micro e macrocosmica. Una massa universale che tende all’agglutinarsi delle parti, un bilancio di attrazioni e repulsioni che equilibra il senso. L’allegoria degli equilibri sociali, politici, relazionali, un passo a due e un ballo di gruppo. Nel nido si viene generati e dal nido si deve spiccare il volo. La partenza e l’arrivo, il transito, il passaggio.

Il concetto di nido costruito con pazienza dallo sforzo del soggetto e il nido composto dal caso dal motus non casuale di una ramazza che cerca l’ordine oggettuale. Particole coerenti agglomerate. Parti organiche ed inorganiche relative e specifiche all’ambiente in cui il nido si forma.

Il nido è locus et corpus e quindi l’identità e il Sè. (Immagina Leonard Cohen che legge questo testo! Cioè con la sua voce profonda e sensuale intendo.)

Grande nebulosa di Orione

Nebulosa del Granchio

THE STYLISTIC CHOICE OF THE NEST

 In the strict consistency Fragogna couldn’t have used a more appropriate term. Lump, clump, mass, agglomeration, ball, bit, block, bulge, bulk, bump, bunch, cake, chip, chunk, cluster, crumb, dab, gob, group, growth, handful, hunk, knot, knurl, lot, morsel, mountain, much, nugget, part, peck, piece, pile, portion, protrusion, protuberance, scrap, section, solid, spot, swelling, tumescence, tumor, wad, wedge. You know what I mean.

Each of the items listed above, however, precludes itself in a negative sense. Fragogna wants to discuss the disorder and chaos in their cosmic balance balancing like a sophisticated yin and yang the opposite poles. The nest in fact reminds us at first glance to heat, mother, reception if we think of the ornithological world, but if we focus on the concept of nest as a “den” the more spontaneous association nest-hole isn’t perhaps the nest of snakes, the cold-blooded? This is how we can symbolically figure out the idea of a Taoist-nest.

But the artist Fragogna is European. From her cultural seabed she is not fishing Oriental pearls but rather she exhumes the remains of ancient Mediterranean civilizations, mainly Greek and Roman which are Apollonian and Dionysian, or northern European and then tartar, barbaric. Her mythology is archaeological and consequently dusty. Her nest is a nebula, a micro and macrocosmic galaxy. A universal mass which tends to agglutinate the particles, a balance of attraction and repulsion that equipoises the way. The Allegory of the social, political, relational composition, a two-step and a dance group. In the nest we are generated and from the nest we have to fly away. Departure and arrival, transit and transition.

The concept of a nest built with patience by the effort of the subject and the nest made up by a not random motus of a broom that seeks an objectual order. Consistent agglomerated particles. Organic and inorganic parts relative to a specific environment in which the nest is formed.

The nest is locus et corpus so it is the identity and the self. (Imagine Leonard Cohen reading this text! With his deep and sexy voice, I mean.)

Galassia -M77

Galassia di Andromeda

Forse nella sua autonomia di pensiero il Nido non vuole raccontare nessuna storia ma a noi pare che Fragogna invece una storia ce la stia raccontando e forse anche più di una. Forse tre.

1. LA STORIA DEL PERO

 Chi “casca” dal pero, sperimenta un doloroso impatto con la realtà, dopo essere stato per troppo tempo nel mondo illusorio dei propri pensieri, o della propria infanzia, ecc.

…

Prima di cascare dal pero bisogna salire sul pero.

Perhaps in its independence of thought the Nest doesn’t want to tell any story but it seems to us that Fragogna instead is telling us a story and maybe even more than one. Maybe three.

1. THE STORY OF THE PEAR TREE

Who “falls” from the pear tree, experiences a painful impact with reality, after having been too long in the illusory world of his thoughts, or his childhood, etc..

…

Before the fall, however, you have to climb the pear tree.

SACCOTTINI DI PASTA SFOGLIA CON TALEGGIO, PERE e NOCI

I saccottini di pasta sfoglia sono dei morbidi gusci di pasta croccante che vengono prima farciti con deliziosi ripieni salati e poi cotti al forno.

Abbiamo preparato questi saccottini con un delicato ripieno di taleggio, pere e noci, ma naturalmente ci si può sbizzarrire con altri fantasiosi ripieni!

Preparare l’impasto dei saccottini è davvero semplicissimo: basta acquistare un rotolo di pasta sfoglia.

I saccottini farciti sono degli ottimi antipasti caldi, ma possono anche essere preparati in anticipo e gustati freddi come spuntino o consumati durante un pic-nic!

INGREDIENTI x 4 saccottini

• Rotolo di pasta sfoglia
• 100 g di taleggio
• 2 pere
• 50 g di gerigli di noce
• 1 uovo

• Stendete il rotolo di pasta sfoglia e dividetelo in quattro
• Su ogni parte adagiate sopra una fetta proporzionata di taleggio, due fettine di pera e la granella di noci b.
• Arrotolate ogni parte avendo cura che non fuoriesca il
• Spennellate ognuna di albume.
• Adagiatele su carta forno e cuocetele a 180°.

“Al contadino non far sapere quanto è buono il taleggio con le pere.”

PUFF PASTRY POUCHES WITH TALEGGIO CHEESE, PEARS AND WALNUTS

The puff pastry pouches are soft shells of crispy pastry that are first filled with delicious savory fillings and then baked.

We have prepared these pouches with a delicate filling of Taleggio cheese, pears and walnuts, but of course you can indulge with other imaginative fillings!

Prepare the mixture of pouches is really easy: just buy a roll of puff pastry.

The pouches stuffed are beautiful hot appetizers, but they can also be prepared in advance and enjoyed cold as a snack or for consumption during a picnic!

INGREDIENTS for 4 pouches

• Roll puff pastry
• 100 g taleggio
• 2 pears
• 50 g of walnut
• 1 egg

• Roll out the puff pastry roll and divide it into four
• On each side lay above a proportionate slice of taleggio, two slices of pear and chopped
• Roll each part taking care that the filling does not spill out.
• Brush each pouch with the albumen.
• Lay them on baking paper and cook at 180°.

“To the farmer don’t let know how good the cheese with pears is though.”

2.a LA STORIA DEL MELO (PARTE PRIMA)

 Si racconta che Newton nel 1666, l’annus mirabilis, fosse seduto sotto un melo nella sua tenuta a Woolsthorpe quando una mela gli cadde sulla testa. Ciò, sempre secondo la leggenda, lo fece pensare alla gravitazione e al perché la Luna non cadesse sulla terra come la mela. Iniziò a pensare dunque a una forza che diminuisse con l’inverso del quadrato della distanza, come l’intensità della luce.

La legge di gravitazione universale (di NEWTON) applicata al Nest

La legge di gravitazione universale afferma che due punti materiali si attraggono con una forza di intensità direttamente proporzionale al prodotto delle masse dei singoli corpi e inversamente proporzionale al quadrato della loro distanza. Questa legge, espressa vettorialmente, diventa:

\nest {F}_{2,1}(\nest r) = \frac{ G\ m_1 m_2 }{r^3} \nest r = \frac{ G\ m_1 m_2 }{r^2} \nest u

 dove \nest {F}_{2\,1} è la forza con cui l’oggetto 1 è attratto dall’oggetto 2, G è la costante di gravitazione universale, che vale circa 6,67 × 10-11 Nm²/kg2, m1 e m2 sono le masse dei due corpi, \nest r = \nest {r}_1 – \nest {r}_2 è il vettore congiungente i due corpi (supposti puntiformi) e r è il suo modulo; nella seconda espressione della forza (che evidenzia il fatto che il modulo della forza è inversamente proporzionale al quadrato della distanza) \nest u = \frac{\nest {r}}{r} rappresenta il versore (unitario) che individua la retta congiungente i due punti materiali.

Definito il vettore accelerazione di gravità:

\nest g=\frac{\nest F_g}{m_1}

la legge di gravitazione universale può essere espressa come:

\nest F_{21}=m_1 \nest g

In prossimità della superficie terrestre il valore di \nest g è approssimativamente:

g \approx 9{,}81 \ \nest{\frac{m}{s^2}}

anche espressa in Newton su kilogrammo di polveri.

N.B.: PER PRINCIPIO DI APPROSSIMAZIONE QUESTA LEGGE È INCONFUTABILE.

2.a THE STORY OF THE APPLE TREE (FIRST PART)

In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effort of that supposition.

 Newton’s law of universal gravitation applied to the Nest

The law of universal gravitation states that two point masses attract each other with a force of intensity directly proportional to the product of the masses of individual bodies and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. This law, expressed vectorially, becomes:

\nest {F}_{2,1}(\nest r) = \frac{ G\ m_1 m_2 }{r^3} \nest r = \frac{ G\ m_1 m_2}{r^2} \nest u

where \ nest {F} _ {2 \, 1} is the force with which the object is attracted by the object 1 2, G is the universal gravitational constant, which is worth about 6.67 × 10-11 Nm ² / kg2 , m1 and m2 are the masses of the two bodies, \ nest r = \ nest {r} _1 – \ nest {r} _2 is the vector joining the two bodies (punctate supposed) and r is its modulus and in the second expression of the strength (which highlights the fact that the magnitude of the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance) \ nest u = \ frac {\ nest {r}} {r} is the unit vector (per unit) which identifies the straight line joining the two particles.

Defined the vector acceleration due to gravity:

\nest g=\frac{\nest F_g}{m_1}

the law of universal gravitation can be expressed as:

\nest F_{21}=m_1 \nest g

In the vicinity of the earth’s surface the value of \ nest g is approximately:

g \approx 9{,}81 \ \nest{\frac{m}{s^2}}

also expressed in Newton per kilogram of dust.

NB: BECAUSE OFTHE PRINCIPLE OF APPROXIMATION THIS LAW IS IRREFUTABLE.

2.b LA STORIA DEL MELO (PARTE SECONDA)

 La legge della gravità della situazione (di FRAGOGNA)

I conti tornano. Sempre. Volendo…
Di nuovo sul concetto di: “come te la danno a bere” e del “todo fa brodo”.

Così risolviamo:
L’ultimo mistero di Fatima, la triangolazione del cerchio e la circolazione col triangolo, chi ha colto la prima mela, il codice da vinci e soprattutto il dilemma: ma Biancaneve, ci è o ci fa?
Don’t worry be happy.

From top to bottom: Red Apple, Madonna di Fatima, Snow White, Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man

2.b THE STORY OF THE APPLE TREE (SECOND PART)

Fragogna’s law of the gravity of the situation

It all adds up. Always. Wanting to …
Again on the concept of“how to give it to drink to the public” and “anything goes”.

So we solve:
The last mystery of Fatima, the triangulation of the circle, who took the first apple,
the da vinci code
and especially the dilemma,
but Snow White, above or below? Do not worry be happy.

Barbara Fragogna, Any Possible Theory (Inkjet print on styrofoam panel, 200 x 200 x 20 cm, 2013)

3. LA STORIA DEL CACO-logico e caco-fonico

Al deretano non si comanda. “No!” gli diceva “NO!”

Ma che cosa vuoi,
rilassami dei tuoi nèi – tremori maligni
che le peggiori proposte per un meritevole travaglio devono ancora presentarsi.

Imbecille!
Quella era la postura adatta allo specchio. Di spalle!
Nascosto!

Ti si addice l’uso di suoni sterpici e di parole zoppe.
ffrczzrr fffrrczrrr
lingue che nemmeno conosci. Krankenkasse!

Com’è che le regole
sono sempre più rigide
le donne più frigide
e i maschi più trògoli?

Com’è che si dovrebbe
“POTERE”
in funzione di un
“VOLERE”
sterilmente EGOnomico?

“La tua volontà è involontaria!” ti disse. Si.

Chi ascolta per capire sono forse in due. Briscole.
Guarda che belle però quelle foglie accartocciate.

3.a THE STORY OF THE CACO-logic and caco-phonic

The backside can not be controlled.

“No!” He told him “NO!”

But what do you want,
relax me of your moles – malignant fremors that the worst proposals for a worthy labor have yet to show up.

Imbecile!
That was the suitable posture in the mirror. Shoulders!
Hidden!

It suits you the use of twiggy sounds and lame words.
ffrczzrr fffrrczrrr
languages that you do not even know. Krankenkasse!

How comes that the rules
are increasingly stringent
women more frigid
and males more than troughs?

How comes that you should “CAN”
in function of a “WANT”
unfruitfully EGOnomic?

“Your will is involuntary” she said.           Yes.

Who listens to understand are perhaps two people. Trumps.

But look how beautiful those withered leaves are.

DON’T STEP ON YOUR INNER DWARF

[i] A.E., Interviste a B.F. 1996-2012, Ed. Inaudite, 2013, p. 126.

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

Mi ricordo vividamente come mi si presentò all’improvviso, pomposo e pimpante Master Piece, il mio primo Nido Di Polvere. Era estate, mi ero trasferita a Padova già da due anni ed il monolocale in cui vivevo con due amiche, le Sante Donne, era già saturo delle mie carabattole. Ero seduta a sorseggiare un caffè quando una forte raffica di vento smosse alcuni agglomerati informi da dietro l’armadio-cucina e, con la furia della vocazione, mi rotolò tra le gambe, il destino.

B.F.

I più affermerebbero senza dubbio o remora che l’artista Fragogna sia un’artista “visuale”, una pittrice legata alla figura e alla forma, un’artista introspettiva, organica e organizzata, viscerale e materica, uno di quegli artisti che ti prendono per il collo e che ti costringono a guardare, a vedere oltre, ad approfondire il livello sensoriale e sensuale dei suoi lavori. I più avrebbero ragione. Perchè questo è ciò che della Fragogna si conosce: i quadri dei rigogliosi e rutilanti corpi barocchi che si aprono in un dialogo fatto di simboli e colore, di bocche che stentano una comunicazione intraducibile, di intestini attorcigliati come cappi vitali. I disegni che si srotolano in filamenti senza fine come a voler dichiarare l’inutilità del punto, della conclusione, dell’enunciato perentorio. Le sculture effimere, flore intestinali e interiorità esposte come giardini razionali, competenti dell’inconsistenza del tempo e della memoria, rovine in decomposizione estetica.

Questo aspetto, questa porzione architettonica di Fragogna che mi azzarderei qui a classificare metaforicamente come “il palco della Gogna” ci comunica il malessere esistenziale che attanaglia la sensibilità dell’artista sin dalla più giovane età anche per grazia o disgrazia dei suoi riferimenti letterari: dai tragici greci ai romantici tedeschi, dagli scapigliati italiani agli illuministi francesi passando per i vicoli maleodoranti della decadenza vittoriana e che poi è maturato nel corso degli anni della sua educazione filosofica e sofistica.

Ma esiste un’altra faccia delle molteplici Fragogna che invece darebbe ragione ai più o meno alcuni che la chiamassero “un artista di concetto”, una teorica, una Kosuthiana. Una faccia meno nota, un lato rimasto fino ad ora in ombra, una porzione di buio che in questo libercolo noi vorremmo finalmente portare alla luce.

IL CONCETTO DI CONCETTO

Non staremo qui ad indottrinarti sul significato di Arte Concettuale perchè vogliamo dare snobisticamente per scontato che tu, caro lettore, sappia di cosa stiamo parlando altrimenti ci chiediamo perchè avresti comperato mai un libro d’artista?

D’altro canto, per dare ragione al principio di contraddizione, sappiamo che tra i lettori ci sono molte persone che hanno acquistato l’opera semplicemente per dare sostegno all’autrice. Molte di queste persone credono che:

• l’arte concettuale è l’arte che si fa dopo aver avuto un’idea e che può essere spiegata con parole proprie ma soprattutto con dei libri lunghissimi e noiosi molto spesso senza figure (non abbiate timore, c’è presenza di figure qui);

• l’arte contemporanea è l’arte che si fa “oggi” per cui anche l’arte primitiva era contemporanea al suo tempo ma probabilmente ormai sono già stati usati tutti i nomi disponibili per definire le varie correnti e non c’è più la possibilità di nominarne altre senza rischiare di cadere nel ridicolo (credo che col termine “transavanguardia” se ne sia definitivamente raggiunta l’epifania [del ridicolo]);

• l’arte contemporanea è l’arte che si fa mentre stai facendo contemporaneamente qualcos’altro per esempio: sei al telefono e scarabocchi su di un foglietto volante degli schizzetti niente male, guardi la tivù mentre mangi e giocherellando col cibo “Toh guarda, una faccia che ride!”, ecc..;

• l’artista per vivere deve fare un altro lavoro e che se l’artista per vivere deve fare un altro lavoro allora non è un vero Chiuso il discorso.

A volte, ma solo a volte, Fragogna stessa si trova a condividere almeno quattro dei quattro punti sopraelencati.

Ci immaginiamo che molte delle persone che hanno comperato il libro per sostegno, pietà, amicizia o commiserazione non leggeranno mai questa pippa di quasi ottanta pagine però non si sa mai, nulla si può dare per scontato e se, come si dice “anche una sola delle mie pecorelle…” (tipo: mamma sento che fin qui ci sei) allora ci sentiamo in dovere e onorati di proseguire nella nostra surreale e incoerente impresa educativa.

| A NEST OF DUST (can be conceptualized in an essay in three volumes)

“I remember vividly how it unexpectedly showed up to me, pompous and perky: Master Piece, my first Nest Of Dust. It was summer, I moved to Padua two years earlier and the apartment where I used to live with two friends, the Holy Women, was already full of my junk. I was sitting sipping a coffee when a strong gust of wind stirred some shapeless agglomerations from behind the kitchen-closet and, with the fury of a vocation, it rolled between my legs, THE destiny.“

B.F.

Most people states with no doubt or hesitation that Fragogna is a “visual” artist, a painter linked to the figure and the shape, an introspective artist, organic and organized, visceral and material, one of those artists that take you to the neck and force you to look at, to see beyond, to deepen the sensory and sensual level of her work. And most people would be right. Because this is the Fragogna we know: the paintings of lush and glowing baroque bodies that open into a dialogue between symbol and color. Mouths that are struggling an untraslatable communication, intestines twisted as vital nooses. The drawings that unroll into filaments without end as if to declare the futility of the point, the conclusion, the peremptory statement. The ephemeral sculptures, intestinal flora and interiors exposed as rational gardens, competent of the inconsistency of time and memory, ruins in aesthetics decaying.

This aspect, this architectural portion of Fragogna that I would presume to classify here metaphorically as “the stage of the Gogna/Pillory” communicates to us the existential malaise that grips the sensitivity of the artist from a very young age for grace or disgrace of her literary references: from Greek tragedies to the German Romanticism, from the italian scapigliatura to French Enlightenment through the stinking alleys of Victorian decadence and then has matured over the years of her educational philosophy and sophistry.

But there is another face of the multiple Fragogna that would give reason to the more or less certain people that would call her “an artist of concept/ a conceptual artist,” a theorist, a Kosuthian. A less known face, a side remained until now in the shadow, a portion of the dark that in this libercolo we would finally bring to light.

THE CONCEPT OF CONCEPT

We don’t want to indoctrinate you on the meaning of conceptual art because we snobbishly assume that you, dear reader, know what we’re talking about otherwise we wonder why would you have ever bought an artist’s book?

On the other hand, giving a reason to the principle of contradiction, we know that among the readers there are many people who bought the work simply to give support to the author. Many of these people believe that:

• Conceptual art is the art that you do after you had an idea, and that can be explained in its own words, but especially with the long and boring books that comes very often without figures (do not be afraid, there is presence of figures here );

• Contemporary art is the art that is done “today” so that even primitive art was contemporary in its Up to now probably there have already been used all the available names to define the various artistic currents and there is no more possibility to fi other ones without risking to be ridiculous (I think the term “transavanguard” has defi ely reached the epiphany [of the ridiculous]);

• Contemporary art is the art that is done at the same time while you’re doing something else, for example: you are at the phone sketching on a piece of flying paper a “not so bad “funny drawing, you are watching TV while eating and toying with food you see: “hey, look, a face that laughs! “, …;

• The artist has to do another job in order to live, and if the artist needs to do another job to live then s-he is not a true End of the speech.

Sometimes Fragogna herself shares at least four of the four points listed above.

We imagine that many of the people who bought the book for support, compassion, sympathy or friendship will never read this blowjob of nearly eighty pages, however, you never know, nothing can be taken for granted and if, as one sais “even one single of my sheep … “(like: mom I feel that you’re here), then We feel obliged and honored to continue our surreal and inconsistent educational enterprise.

E ALLORA: che cos’è un concetto?

Insegna Treccani.it:

concètto s. m. [dal lat. conceptus -us, der. di concipere «concepire»]. –

1. Pensiero, in quanto concepito dalla mente; più in particolare, anche dal punto di vista filosofico, la nozione che la mente si è formata dell’intima essenza di una data realtà (materiale o astratta), afferrando insieme i varî aspetti e i caratteri essenziali e costanti di questa realtà (…)

Approfondisce Wikipedia:
Disambiguazione – Se stai cercando il nome proprio di persona maschile, vedi Concetta.

Nel concettuale il “motivo di concetto” viene stravolto. Siamo in presenza di un paradosso? Si può concettualizzare il concetto di concetto? Che garbuglio! Ma pare di si, che sia possibile proprio grazie al principio per cui “tutto è possibile”. Mi spiego: se la “ragione” del termine “concetto” è quella che ci viene insegnata da Treccani.it allora il concetto di concetto nell’arte concettuale è la “disambiguazione” di Wikipedia e cioè: vedi Concetta. Ma solo se stai cercando il nome proprio di persona maschile ergo: Concetto, alterato in Concettino e ipocoristicato in Cettino. Il Concetto quindi con la C maiuscola. La sintesi e l’essenza del concetto. Il passaggio dal concetto significante al Concetto significato.

Il passaggio dal concetto al Concetto e dal nido di polvere al Nido Di Polvere.

E qui vi volevo. Il nido di polvere sotto al letto, dietro la porta, tra il battiscopa e il mobile diventa in arte il Nido Di Polvere. Con le maiuscole. Ma Fragogna non ci fa un discorso scontato. Sarebbe facile tornare a Duchamp e continuare a masticare l’ormai immasticabile bolo della decontestualizzazione. Nonostante sia ancora accettabile riproporre, come peperoni non digeriti la sera, l’ipersaturo universo di oggetti decontestualizzati che riempiono i musei, le gallerie e le varie biennali d’arte. Nonostante l’oggetto decontestualizzato sia ancora accettato e celebrato come la più fresca delle primizie.

Il Nido Di Polvere non viene quindi decontestualizzato dall’artista ma si decontestualizza “di per sè”. Il Nido rotola seguendo dei percorsi non casuali all’interno della stanza o tra le stanze. Se le finestre sono aperte e c’è vento, ma basta anche una leggera brezza per creare una corrente, segue delle precise traiettorie matematiche (Ill. 1). Se le finestre sono chiuse e non ci sono spifferi si muove in base ad altri movimenti come per esempio dei corpi umani o animali che si spostano, il fischio della pentola a pressione, le vibrazioni dello stereo, le scosse di assestamento e vari altri fattori (Ill. 2). Se a casa non c’è nessuno e l’ambiente è sigillato allora il Nido può riposarsi (Ill. 3), ma non è detto. Perchè il Nido Di Polvere possiede un’autonomia. E’ una massa organica di microstrutture e microrganismi che, per quanto impercettibilmente, si muovono (Ill. 4).

Ma se il Nido Di Polvere non è influenzato dall’operato dell’artista che invece si limita a registrarne i movimenti, se non c’è trasformazione, creatività, atto, si può parlare di opera d’arte? Possiamo filosofeggiare sui metri di giudizio. Se consideriamo il lavoro da un punto di vista pindarico possiamo postulare che solo la semplice azione di porre l’attenzione sul determinato soggetto ne determina un senso relativo e quindi una trasformazione concettuale anche se non propriamente fisica. Se un panettiere prende in considerazione l’oggetto farina quasi sicuramente il senso relativo alla farina è quello di fare il pane. Se è invece un designer a focalizzare la sua attenzione sull’oggetto farina allora probabilmente il senso della farina sarà quello di essere appoggiata ad un piano o di essere versata in un contenitore con determinate caratteristiche estetiche, geometriche e pratiche (ma trattandosi di design ciò non è detto). Se uno storico della parrucca invece si dovesse cimentare sullo stesso soggetto è quasi certo che la sua formazione professionale relativizzerà la farina al XVIII secolo quando veniva usata come componente di base della cipria per parrucche alla corte di Francia.

Il Nido Di Polvere relativizza la sua essenza e solo per il semplice fatto di essere considerato opera d’arte, la diventa. L’opera esiste anche quando viene “spazzata” via non solo perchè viene impressionata su memoria fotografica e su testi e documenti ma anche e soprattutto perchè è sempre presente. Il Nido Di Polvere è imprescindibile e quindi trascendente. Dalla trascendenza al divino la triangolazione col passo biblico è a portata di mano:
 

Con il sudore del tuo volto mangerai il pane; finché tornerai alla terra, perché da essa sei stato tratto: polvere tu sei e in polvere tornerai!

Genesi 3:19

SO THEN: what is a concept?

New Oxford American Dictionary teaches:

con•cept |noun

an abstract idea; a general notion : structuralism is a difficult concept | the concept of justice.

• an idea or invention to help sell or publicize a commodity : a new concept in corporate hospitality.

• Philosophy an idea or mental picture of a group or class of objects formed by combining all their aspects.

Deepening with Wikipedia: Disambiguation
If you’re looking for the proper name of a male person, see Concetta.

In the conceptual the “cause of concept” is distorted. Are we in the presence of a paradox? Can you conceptualize the concept of concept? What a tangle! But it seems that it is possible thanks to the principle why “everything is possible”. Let me explain: if the “reason” of the term “concept” is that one we’ve learnd from the Oxford American Dictionary then the concept of concept in conceptual art is the “disambiguation” of Wikipedia, see: Concetta. But only if you’re looking for the name of a male person ergo: Concept, altered Concettino and ipocoristicato in Cettino. The Concept with the uppercase. The synthesis and the essence of the concept. The transition from concept “significated” to Concept “signifying”.

The transition from concept to Concept and from nest of dust to Nest Of Dust.

And here I want you. The nest of dust under the bed, behind the door, between the baseboard and the cabinet becomes the Nest Of Dust. With uppercase. But Fragogna doesn’t make a granted speech. It would be easy to get back to Duchamp and continue chewing the now immasticabile bolus of decontextualization. While it is still acceptable to propose, undigested as peppers in the evening, the hyper saturated universe of decontextualized objects that fills the museums, galleries and various art biennials. Despite the decontextualized object is still accepted and celebrated as the most juicy of the first fruits.

The Nest Of Dust is therefore not put out of context by the artist but it decontextualizes itself by itself. The Nest rolls along paths not randomly inside the room or between rooms. If the windows are open and there is no wind, but also just a slight breeze to create a current, the Nest follows those precise mathematical trajectories (Ill. 1). If the windows are closed and there are no drafts, the Nest moves according to other movements such as human bodies or animals in movement, the whistle of the pressure cooker, the vibrations of the stereo, the aftershocks and various other factors (ill. 2). If no one is at home and the environment is sealed then the Nest can rest (Ill. 3), but it is not granted. Because the Nest Of Dust possesses autonomy. It is a mass of organic microstructures and microorganisms that, as imperceptibly, moves (Ill. 4).

But if the Nest Of Dust is not influenced by the work of the artist who merely records the movements, if there is no transformation, creativity, action, can we consider it as a work of art? We can philosophize about the methods of judgment. If we consider the work from a Pindaric point of view we can postulate that only the simple action of placing the focus on the given subject determines a relative sense of the subject and therefore it determines a conceptual transformation even if not strictly physical. If a baker takes into account the object “flour” almost certainly the sense of the flour is to make bread. If it is a designer instead to focus his attention on the object “flour” then probably the sense of the flour is to be leaning against a plan or to be poured into a container with certain visual characteristics, geometrical and practical (but this is not always the case when it is about design). If a wig’s historian would challenge himselves on the same subject is almost certain that his professional training will relativize the flour to the eighteenth century when it was used as basic component of the powder for wigs at the court of France.

The Nest Of Dust relativizes its essence and just for the simple fact of being considered a work of art, it becomes a work of art. The work exists even when it is “swept” away not only because it is impressed on a photographic memory and on texts and documents but also and especially because it is always present. The Nest Of Dust is essential and therefore transcendent. From transcendence to the divine triangulation, the biblical passage is at hand:
 

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Genesis 3:19

In un processo ostentatamente blasfemo e logico Fragogna trasforma il Dio in polvere. Polvere sei e polvere ritornerai, disse Dio all’uomo. Ma l’uomo creò il Dio e gli mise in bocca le parole della sua distruzione. L’uomo Adamo (e in questo caso l’attributo maschile è di dovere) ha inventato l’illusione del Dio e si è auto-imposto la sua violenta supremazia. L’immaginario tiranno divino dall’alto dei cieli psichici regolarizza la vita del suo schiavo umano in relazione sadomasochistica e senza timore di soverchia. La donna Eva (la ribelle, la dissidente, l’artista) ascoltando la serpe, istinto della sua ragione, si rivolta contro l’uomo perchè sa che l’uomo stesso, essendo il creatore del Dio che giustifica la sua stessa origine, è dio. Un dio minuscolo quindi. Un dio nato dalla polvere della debolezza umana e votato di conseguenza alla polvere.

Ma Fragogna non intende travisarvi in discorsi pseudo-femministi in quanto fervente sostenitrice della tesi per cui, se le donne avessero avuto una massa muscolare superiore a quella maschile, ne avrebbero ricalcato i passi. Se le donne e gli uomini invece fossero stati dotati della stessa massa muscolare, Fragogna sostiene la tesi che il genere umano si sarebbe già estinto da innumerevoli generazioni. E forse a questo punto il pianeta terra porterebbe i capelli un po’ più lunghi, aggiungiamo Noi.
 

“Qualsiasi insignificante dettaglio sostiene una tesi mal costruita.” ©

In a process ostensibly blasphemous and logical Fragogna turns God to dust. Dust you are and dust you shall return, God said to man. But the man created the God putting into his mouth the words of his destruction. Adam, the man (and in this case the male attribute is proper) invented the illusion of God and he self-imposed himself to his violent supremacy. From heaven the imaginary divine tyrant regulates the psychic life of his human slave in a sado-masochistic relationship without fear of any overpowers. Eve, the woman (the rebellious, the dissident, the artist) listening to the serpent, the instinct of her reason, turns against the man because she knows that the man himself, being the creator of the God who justifies its origin, is god himself. A god in lowercase. A god born from the dust of human weakness and voted accordingly to dust.

But Fragogna does not intend to misrepresent you into pseudo-feminist discourses. As a fervent supporter of the argument that, if women had had a higher muscle mass than men, they would have traced the same steps. But if women and men would have been endowed with the same muscle mass, Fragogna supports the thesis that the human race would become extinct by countless generations. And perhaps at this point the planet earth would wear the hair a bit longer, We would add.
 

“Any insignificant detail supports a bad constructed thesis.” ©

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

> Intro a sorpresa n°0 | INTRO’s INTRO

E’ molto importante leggere le introduzioni.

It is very important to read the introductions.

>> Intro a sorpresa n°1 | LINGUISTIC INTRO

THE WRONG TRANSLATION IS A CHOICE IS A CHOICE

Volevo scrivere il libro in italiano e in inglese. Per internazionalità. Perchè il mio sogno è che tutti parlino in inglese anche male non importa, basta capirsi (al momento vivo in Germania e il tedesco, beh… è tedesco). Però questo è un libro d’artista low budget perciò non ci sono i soldi per il traduttore. Allora per far di necessità virtù me ne sono inventata una particolarmente geniale e l’ho fatta diventare parte integrante (e pure necessaria) del concept. Quindi l’inglese ci sarà ma sarà molto poco corretto (si fa quel che si può). Del resto l’approssimazione è una delle conseguenze più dirette del flagello del low budget sulla cultura (parlo di quel che mi riguarda ma potrei parlare anche in generale). Se non ci sono i soldi bisogna privarsi delle parti “meno” vitali (come estrarre la milza, un rene e fino a due terzi di fegato tanto “uno” vive lo stesso “abbastanza” bene). E’ così cari miei che si abbassa la qualità e si vive in un mondo “tra virgolette” (e tra parentesi).

Comunque sia questo testo lo volevo scrivere anche in inglese, così ho chiesto aiuto al Google Translator, che è gratis. Vedrete più avanti come riuscirò a giustificare questa scelta obbligata intellettualizzandola nel Capitolo 4 La Filosofia Della Traduzione Scorretta o Sull’Approssimazione 2.

P.S.: Ho scelto Google (piuttosto che Bing o altri) perchè concettualmente lo trovo più trash (e politicamente, per via delle multinazionali).

I wanted to write the book in Italian and English. For internationality. Because my dream is that everyone speaks English even if badly, it doesn’t matter, just to understand each other (at the moment I live in Germany and the German, well … is German). It is a low budget book so there is no money for the translator. So, to make a virtue out of necessity I have invented a particularly brilliant solution and I transformed the wrong translation into an integral part (and even necessary) of the concept. There will be an English version but it will be a little-very wrong. One does what one can. Moreover, the approximation is one of the most direct consequences of the scourge of the low budget reality on culture (I speak about a topic that concerns me but I could also talk in general). If there is no money you have to deprive yourself of the“less” vital parts (such as removing the spleen, a kidney and up to two-thirds of the liver as“one” lives the same“pretty” well). It ‘s like this, my dears, that the quality falls down and as a consequence we live in a“quotation marks” (and parenthesis) world.

Anyway I still wanted to write this text in English so I asked for help to Google Translator, which is free. You will see how I can justify and intellectualize this choice in the Chapter 4 The Philosophy of Mistranslation or On Approximation 2.

P.S.: I chose Google (rather than Bing or others) because I find it conceptually more trash (and politically, because of the multinationals).

P.S.2: Dear English reader, you have a chance to interact with the book using a RED PEN to correct the mistakes. I know, everybody dreams to do it at least once in a life!                                                                                              😉

>>> Intro a sorpresa n°2 | THAT’S ALL, FOLKS

Senza senso dell’umorismo non si va da nessuna parte, gente.
Bisogna sdrammatizzare, ma non troppo.

Without a sense of humor you don’t go anywhere, folks.
You have to play down, but not too much.

>>>> Intro a sorpresa n°3 | KEEP CALM

Rilassati, non è sangue, è pomodoro.

Relax, it is not blood, it is tomato.

>>>>> Intro a sorpresa n°4 | POTPOURRI INTRO

 Come Kilgore Trout* per veder pubblicati i suoi racconti di fantascienza si deve rivolgere ad un editore di pornografia che “per dar corpo a libri e riviste di foto piccanti” ne cambia i titoli ma ne mantiene la forma, così io in Nest Of Dust camufferò sotto una sapiente architettura di critica d’arte contemporanea di alte pretese e belle speranze quello che invece più mi sta a cuore pubblicare disseminando qua e là come viene, perchè non saltino troppo all’occhio e perchè non insospettiscano i benpensanti, alcune ricette della tradizione impopolare della cucina degli avanzi e un paio di storielline del mistero e di teorie bislacche che tanto si addicono al sole e all’ombrellone. Ma anche al caminetto e alle castagne.

To see published his science fiction stories, Kilgore Trout * have to apply to a publisher of pornography that, in order “to give body to books and magazines of hot photos”, changes the titles but lives the same content. As well I will hide in the Nest Of Dust’s wise architecture of art criticism what instead is closest to my heart to publish. Scattering here and there (not to give them too much attention and not to upset the right-thinking readers) some traditional unpopular cooking leftovers recipes and some little stories of mystery and outlandish theories that so suited to the sun and the ombrellone/beach umbrella. But even to the fireplace and the chestnuts.

*Kilgore Trout è uno dei protagonisti de La colazione dei campioni di Kurt Vonnegut (uno dei miei eroi).

*Kilgore Trout is one of the protagonists of Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut (one of my heroes).

>>>>>> Intro a sorpresa n°5 | ONE OF THE KEYS (una delle chiavi)

 Posso sempre dire che l’ha scritto il mio Avatar, che non è l’Alter Ego, è l’Avatar. L’alter ego è Ponzio Pilato (quello che se ne è lavato le mani, per capirci…). Assurdo.

I can always say that my Avatar wrote it, which is not the Alter Ego, it is the Avatar. The Alter Ego is Pontius Pilate (the one who washed his hands, so to speak…). Absurd.

>>>> Intro a sorpresa n°6

 

Joseph Kosuth, Art As Idea As Idea, 1967. Black and white photographs mounted on board, 120 x 120 cm.

 

 

Barbara Fragogna, Too Much Is Too Much, 2013. Black and white print mounted on board, 120 x 120 cm.

 

COPYRIGHT 2013

BARBARA FRAGOGNA

§ 75
The Concept of an Objective Purposiveness of Nature Is a Critical Principle of Reason for Our Reflective Judgment

There is clearly a big difference between saying that certain things of nature, or even all of nature, could be produced only by a cause that follows intentions in determining itself to action, and saying that the peculiar character of my cognitive powers is such that the only way I can judge how those things are possible and produced is by conceiving, to account for this production, a cause that acts according to intentions, and hence a being that produces things in a way analogous to the causality of an understanding. If I say the first, I am trying to decide something about the object, and am obliged to establish that a concept I have assumed has objective reality. If I say the second, reason determines only how I must use my cognitive powers commensurately with their peculiarity and with the essential conditions imposed by both their range and their limits. Hence the first is an objective principle for determinative judgment, the second a subjective principle for merely reflective judgment and hence a maxim imposed on it by reason.

For if we want to investigate the organized products of nature by continued observation, we find it completely unavoidable to apply [unterlegen] to nature the concept of an intention, so that even for our empirical use of reason this concept is an absolutely necessary maxim. Now, obviously, once we have adopted such a guide for studying nature and found that it works, we must at least try this maxim of judgment on the whole of nature too, since this maxim may well allow us to discover many further laws of nature that would otherwise remain hidden to us since our insights into the inner nature of its mechanism is so limited. But while that maxim of judgment is useful when applied to the whole of nature, it is not indispensable there, since the whole of nature is not given to us as organized (in the strictest sense of organized as given above). But when we deal with those products of nature that we can judge only as having intentionally been formed in just this way rather than some other, then we need that maxim of reflective judgment essentially, if we are to acquire so much as an empirical cognition of the intrinsic character of these products. For we cannot even think of them as organized things without also thinking that they were produced intentionally.

Now if we present the existence or form of a thing as possible only under the condition that there is a purpose, then the concept of the thing is inseparably connected with the concept that the thing is contingent (in terms of natural laws). That is also why those natural things that we find possible only as purposes constitute the foremost proof that the world as a whole is contingent, and are the sole basis for a proof that holds both for common understanding and for the philosopher: that this whole depends on and has its origin in a being that exists apart from the world and (given how purposive these forms are) is moreover intelligent. Hence these things are the sole basis for proving that teleology cannot find final [Vollendung] answers to its inquiries except in a theology.

But what does even the most complete teleology of all prove in the end? Does it prove, say, that such an intelligent being exists? No; all it proves is that, given the character of our cognitive powers, i.e., in connecting experience with the supreme principles of reason, we are absolutely unable to form a concept of how such a world is possible except by thinking of it as brought about by a supreme cause that acts intentionally. Hence we cannot objectively establish the proposition: There is an intelligent original being; we can do so only subjectively, for the use of our judgment as it reflects on the purposes in nature, which are unthinkable on any principle other than that of an intentional causality of a supreme cause.

If we tried, from teleological bases, to establish dogmatically the proposition that such an intelligent being exists, we would get entangled in difficulties from which we could not extricate ourselves. For such inferences would have to presuppose the proposition that the organized beings in the world are impossible except through a cause that acts intentionally. This means that we would have to be willing to assert that, merely because we need the idea of purposes in order to study these things in their causal connection and to cognize the lawfulness in that connection, we are also justified in presupposing that every thinking and cognizing being is subject to the same need as a necessary condition, and hence that this condition attaches to the object rather than merely to ourselves, as subjects. But there is no way that such an assertion can be upheld. For purposes in nature are not given to us by the object: we do not actually observe purposes in nature as intentional ones, but merely add this concept to nature’s products in our thought, as a guide for judgment in reflecting on these products. And an a priori justification for accepting such a concept, as having objective reality, is even impossible for us. Hence there is absolutely no proposition left to us except the one that rests on subjective conditions only, the conditions under which judgment reflects commensurately with our cognitive powers. This proposition, if expressed as holding objectively and dogmatically, would read: There is a God. But in fact the proposition entitles us human beings only to this restricted formula: The purposiveness that we must presuppose even for cognizing the inner possibility of many natural things is quite unthinkable to us and is beyond our grasp unless we think of it, and of the world as such, as a product of an intelligent cause (a God).

Now if this proposition, which is based on an indispensable and necessary maxim of our judgment, is perfectly satisfactory for all speculative and practical uses of our reason from every human point of view, then indeed I would like to know just what we have lost if we cannot also prove it valid for higher beings, i.e., prove it from pure objective bases (to which unfortunately our powers do not extend). For it is quite certain that in terms of merely mechanical principles of nature we cannot even adequately become familiar with, much less explain, organized beings and how they are internally possible. So certain is this that we may boldly state that it is absurd for human beings even to attempt it, or to hope that perhaps some day another Newton might arise who would explain to us, in terms of natural laws unordered by any intention, how even a mere blade of grass is produced. Rather, we must absolutely deny that human beings have such insight. On the other hand, it would also be too presumptuous for us to judge that, supposing we could penetrate to the principle in terms of which nature made the familiar universal laws of nature specific, there simply could not be in nature a hidden basis adequate to make organized beings possible without an underlying intention (but through the mere mechanism of nature). For where would we have obtained such knowledge? Probabilities are quite irrelevant here, since we are concerned with judgments of pure reason. Hence we can make no objective judgment whatever, whether affirmative or negative, about the proposition as to whether there is a being who acts according to intentions and who, as cause (and hence author) of the world, is the basis of the beings we rightly call natural purposes. Only this much is certain: If at any rate we are to judge by what our own nature grants us to see (subject to the conditions and bounds of our reason), then we are absolutely unable to account for the possibility of those natural purposes except by regarding them as based on an intelligent being. This is all that conforms to the maxim of our reflective judgment and so to a ground that, though in the subject, attaches inescapably to the human race.

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§ 76
Comment

The following contemplation would greatly deserve elaborate treatment in transcendental philosophy; but here I insert it only as a digression intended for elucidation (not as a proof of what I have set forth here).

Reason is a power of principles, and its ultimate demand for principles aims at the unconditioned. Understanding, on the other hand, always serves reason only under a certain condition, one that must be given to us. But without concepts of the understanding, to which objective reality must be given, reason cannot make objective (synthetic) judgments at all. As theoretical reason it has absolutely no constitutive principles of its own, but merely regulative ones. Two points emerge from this. First, if reason advances to where understanding cannot follow, it becomes transcendent, displaying itself not in objectively valid concepts, but instead in ideas, though these: do have a basis (as regulative principles). But, second, since the understanding cannot keep pace with reason, while yet it would be needed to make ideas valid for objects, it restricts the validity of those ideas of reason to just the subject, yet in a universal way, i.e., as a validity for all subjects of our species. In other words, understanding restricts the validity of these ideas to this condition: that, given the nature of our (human) cognitive ability, or even given any concept we can form of the ability of a finite rational being as such, all thinking must be like this and cannot be otherwise – though we are not asserting that such a judgment has its basis in the object. Let me illustrate my point by some examples. I am not urging the reader to accept these examples immediately as proved propositions; they are both too important and too difficult for that. But they may still provide him with food for meditation, and serve to elucidate what is our proper task here.

It is indispensable and necessary for human understanding to distinguish between the possibility and the actuality of things, and this fact has its basis in the subject and in the nature of his cognitive powers. For if the exercise of these powers did not require two quite heterogeneous components, understanding to provide concepts, and sensible intuition to provide objects corresponding to these, then there would be no such distinction (between the possible and the actual). If our understanding were intuitive rather than conceptual it would have no objects except actual ones. For we would then be without concepts (and these deal with the mere possibility of an object) and also be without sensible intuitions (which do give us something actual, yet without allowing us to cognize it as an object). But our entire distinction between the merely possible and the actual rests on this: in saying that a thing is possible we are positing only the presentation of it with respect to our concept and to our thinking ability in general; but in saying that a thing is actual we are positing the thing itself [an sich selbst] (apart from that concept). Hence the distinction between possible and actual things holds merely subjectively, for human understanding. For even if something does not exist, we can still have it in our thoughts; or we can present something as given, even though we have as yet no concept of it. Hence the two propositions, that things can be possible without being actual, and that consequently one cannot at all infer actuality from mere possibility, do indeed hold for human reason. And yet this does not prove that the distinction lies in things themselves [selbst]; there clearly is no such implication. It is true that those two propositions also hold for objects insofar as our cognitive power, which is conditioned by the sensible, deals also with objects of sense; but they do not hold for things in general, i.e., even for things in themselves. That this is so is evident from the fact that reason forever demands that we assume something or other (the original basis) as existing with unconditioned necessity, something in which there is no longer to be any distinction between possibility and actuality; and for this idea our understanding has absolutely no concept, i.e., it cannot find a way to present such a thing and its way of existing. For if the understanding thinks it (no matter how), then we are merely presenting the thing as possible. If the understanding is conscious of it as given in intuition, then it is actual, and no thought of possibility comes in. Hence the concept of an absolutely necessary being, though an indispensable idea of reason, is for human understanding an unattainable problematic concept. This concept does hold for the use we humans make of our cognitive powers in accordance with their peculiar character; but by the same token it does not hold for the object, and hence for every cognizing being. For I cannot presuppose that thought and intuition are two distinct conditions for the exercise of the cognitive powers of every such cognizing being, and hence for the possibility and actuality of things. An understanding to which this distinction did not apply would mean: All objects cognized by me are (exist); such a being could have no presentation whatever of the possibility that some objects might not exist after all, i.e., of the contingency of those that do exist, nor, consequently, of the necessity to be distinguished from that contingency. What makes it so difficult for our understanding with its concepts to match reason here is merely this: that there is something which for it, as human understanding, is transcendent (i.e., impossible in view of the subjective conditions of its cognition), but which reason nevertheless treats as belonging to the object and turns into a principle. Now in this kind of case the following maxim always holds: where cognizing certain objects is beyond the ability of our understanding, we must think them in accordance with the subjective conditions for exercising our powers, conditions that attach necessarily to our (i.e., human) nature. And if the judgments we make in this way cannot be constitutive principles that determine the character of the object (as is indeed inevitable where the concepts are transcendent), they can still be regulative principles, safe and immanent in their employment and commensurate with the human point of view.

We said that reason, when it considers nature theoretically, has to assume the idea that the original basis of nature has unconditioned necessity. But when it considers nature practically, it similarly presupposes its own causality as unconditioned (as far as nature is concerned), i.e., its own freedom, since it is conscious of its town moral command. Here, however, the objective necessity of the action, in other words, duty, is being opposed to the necessity that the action would have if it were a mere event with its basis in nature rather than in freedom (i.e., the causality of reason); and the action that morally is absolutely necessary is regarded as quite contingent physically (i.e., we see that what ought necessarily to happen still fails to happen on occasion. It is clear, therefore, that only because of the subjective character of our practical ability do we have to present moral laws as commands (and the actions conforming to them as duties) and does reason express this necessity not by is (i.e., happens) but by ought to be. This would not be the case if we considered reason, regarding its causality, as being without sensibility (the subjective condition for applying reason to objects of nature), and hence as being a cause in an intelligible world that harmonized throughout with the moral law. For in such a world there would be no difference between obligation and action, between a practical law that says what is possible through our doing, and the theoretical law that says what is actual through our doing. It is true that an intelligible world in which everything would be actual just because it is (both good and) possible – and, along with this world, even freedom, its formal condition – is for us a transcendent concept that is inadequate for a constitutive principle for determining an object and its objective reality. Yet the concept of freedom serves us as a universal regulative principle because of the (in part sensible) character of our nature and ability, and the same applies to all rational beings connected with the world of sense, insofar as our reason is capable of forming a presentation of them. That principle does not objectively determine the character of freedom as a form of causality; rather, and with no less validity than if it did do that, it makes the rule that we ought to act according to that idea a command for everyone.

Similarly, regarding the case before us, we may grant that, unless we had the kind of understanding that has to proceed from the universal to the particular, we would find no distinction between natural mechanism and the technic of nature, i.e., connection in it in terms of purposes. For the fact that our understanding has to proceed from the universal to the particular has the following consequence: In terms of the universal supplied by the understanding the particular, as such, contains something contingent. And yet reason requires that even the particular laws of nature be combined in a unified and hence lawful way. (This lawfulness of the contingent is called purposiveness.) Therefore, unless the power of judgment has its own universal law under which it can subsume that particular, it cannot recognize any purposiveness in it and hence cannot make any determinative judgment about it. Differently put: It is impossible to derive the particular laws, as regards what is contingent in them, a priori from the universal ones supplied by the understanding, i.e., by determining the concept of the object. Hence the concept of the purposiveness that nature displays in its products must be one that, while not pertaining to the determination of objects themselves, is nevertheless a subjective principle that reason has for our judgment, since this principle is necessary for human judgment in dealing with nature. The principle is regulative (not constitutive), but it holds just as necessarily for our human judgment as it would if it were an objective principle.

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§ 77
On the Peculiarity of the Human Understanding That Makes the Concept of a Natural Purpose Possible for Us

In the preceding Comment we mentioned peculiarities of our cognitive power (even of the higher one), and how we are easily misled into transferring these peculiarities to things themselves as if they were objective predicates. But in fact these peculiarities concern ideas, to which no commensurate object can be given in experience, so that they can serve us only as regulative principles in the pursuit of experience. Now the same applies to the concept of a natural purpose as regards the cause that makes it possible to apply such a predicate: that cause we can find only in our idea of it. And yet here the result which conforms to that idea (i.e., the product itself) is given in nature. Hence the concept of a causality of nature which implies that nature is a being acting according to purposes seems to turn the idea of a natural purpose into a principle that is constitutive of the natural purpose. In this respect this idea is distinguished from all others.

But (in fact) the distinguishing feature consists merely in this: the idea in question is a principle of reason for the power of judgment, not for the understanding. Hence it is a principle that helps us merely to apply understanding generally to possible objects of experience, namely, in those cases where we cannot judge determinatively but can judge merely reflectively. Therefore, even though in those cases the object can be given in experience, yet we cannot even determinately judge it in conformity with the idea (let alone do so with complete adequacy) but can only reflect on it.

Hence this distinguishing feature of the idea of a natural purpose concerns a peculiarity of our (human) understanding in relation to the power of judgment and its reflection on things of nature. But if that is so, then we must here be presupposing the idea of some possible understanding different from the human one Oust as, in the Critique of Pure Reason, we had to have in mind a possible different intuition if we wanted to consider ours as a special kind, namely, as an intuition for which objects count only as appearances). Only by presupposing this idea can we say that because of the special character of our understanding must we consider certain natural products, as to how they are possible, as having been produced intentionally and as purposes. And we do say this, though without implying that there must actually be a special cause that determines objects on the basis of the presentation of a purpose, i.e., without implying that the basis that makes such products of nature possible could not be found, even by an understanding different from (higher than) the human one, in the very mechanism of nature, i.e., in a causal connection that does not necessarily [ausschliessungsweise] presuppose an understanding as cause.

So what matters here is how our understanding relates to judgment: we must find in this relation a certain contingency in the character of our understanding, so that we can take note of this peculiarity as what distinguishes our understanding from other possible ones.

We find this contingency quite naturally in the particular that judgment has to bring under the universal supplied by the concepts of the understanding. For the universal supplied by our (human) understanding does not determine the particular; therefore even if different things agree in a common characteristic, the variety of ways in which they may come before our perception is contingent. For our understanding is a power of concepts, i.e., a discursive understanding, so that it must indeed be contingent for it as to what the character and all the variety of the particular may be that can be given to it in nature and that can be brought under its concepts. Now all cognition requires not only understanding but also intuition; and a power of complete spontaneity as opposed to receptivity of intuition would be a cognitive power different from and wholly independent of, sensibility: thus a power of complete spontaneity of intuition would be an understanding in the most general sense of the term. Hence can conceive of an intuitive – understanding as well (negatively, merely as one that is not discursive), which, unlike ours, does not (by means of concepts) proceed from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual, For such an understanding there would not be that contingency in the way natures products harmonize with the understanding in terms of particular laws. It is this contingency that makes it so difficult for our understanding to unify the manifold in nature so as to give rise to cognition. This task, which an intuitive understanding does not need to perform, can be accomplished by our understanding only through a harmony between natural characteristics and our power of concepts; and this harmony is very contingent.

Therefore our understanding has this peculiarity as regards judgment: when cognition occurs through our understanding, the particular is not determined by the universal and therefore cannot be derived from it alone. And yet this particular in nature’s diversity must (through concepts and laws) harmonize with the universal in order that the particular can be subsumed under the universal. But, under these circumstances, this harmony must be very contingent, and must lack a determinate principle as far as the power of judgment is concerned.

How then can we at least conceive of the possibility of such a harmony – one that is presented as contingent and hence as possible only through a purpose that aims at it – between the things of nature and our judgment? To do this, we must at the same time conceive of a different understanding: without as yet attributing any concept of a purpose to this understanding, we can then present this harmony between the particular natural laws and our judgment as necessary relative to that understanding, even though our own understanding can conceive of this harmony only as mediated by purposes.

The point is this: Our understanding has the peculiarity that when it cognizes, e.g., the cause of a product, it must proceed from the analytically universal to the particular (i.e., from concepts to the empirical intuition that is given); consequently, in this process our understanding determines nothing regarding the diversity of the particular. Instead (under the supposition that the object is a natural product) our understanding must wait until the subsumption of the empirical intuition under the concept provides this determination for the power of judgment. But we can also conceive of an understanding that, unlike ours, is not discursive but intuitive and hence proceeds from the synthetically universal (the intuition of a whole as a whole) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts. Hence such an understanding as well as its presentation of the whole has no contingency in the combination of the parts in order to make a determinate form of the whole possible. Our understanding, on the other hand, requires this contingency, because it must start from the parts taken as bases – which are thought of as universal – for different possible forms that are to be subsumed under these bases as consequences. We, given the character of our understanding, can regard a real whole of nature only as the joint effect of the motive forces of the parts. Let us suppose, then, that we try to present, not the possibility of the whole as dependent on the parts (which would conform to our discursive understanding), but the possibility of the parts, in their character and combination, as dependent on the whole, so that we would be following the standard set by intuitive (archetypal) understanding. If we try to do this, then, in view of that same peculiarity of our understanding, we cannot do it by having the whole contain the basis that makes the connection of the parts possible (since in the discursive kind of cognition this would be a contradiction) The only way that we can present the possibility of the parts as dependent on the whole is by having the whole contain the basis that makes possible the form of that whole as well as the connection of the parts required to make this form possible. Hence such a whole would be an effect, a product, the presentation of which is regarded as the cause that makes the product possible. But the product of a cause that determines its effect merely on the basis of the presentation of that effect is called a purpose. It follows from this that the fact that we present certain products of nature as possible only in terms of a kind of causality that differs from the causality of the natural laws pertaining to matter, namely, the causality of purposes and final causes, is merely a consequence of the special character of our understanding. Therefore, this principle of the causality in terms of final causes does not pertain to how such things themselves are possible through this kind of production (not even if we consider them as phenomena), but pertains only to the way our understanding is able to judge them. This clarifies at the same time why we are far from satisfied in natural science if we can explain the products of nature through a causality in terms of purposes: the reason for this is that all we demand in such an explanation is that natural production be judged in a way commensurate with our ability for judging such production, i.e., in a way commensurate with reflective judgment, rather than with the things themselves and for the sake of determinative judgment. And Ito make these points we do not have to prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible. Rather, we must prove only that the contrast between such an intellect and) our discursive understanding – an understanding which requires images (it is an intellectus ectypus) – and the contingency of its having this character lead us to that idea (of an intellectus archetypus), and we must prove that this idea does not involve a contradiction.

When we consider a material whole as being, in terms of its form, a product of its parts and of their forces and powers for combining on their own (to which we must add other matter that the parts supply to one another), then our presentation is of a whole produced mechanically. But we get no concept of a whole as a purpose in this way; the inner possibility of a whole as a purpose always presupposes that there is an idea of this whole and presupposes that what these parts are like and how they operate depend on that idea, which is Just how we have to present an organized body. But, as I have shown, it does not follow from this that it is impossible for such a body to be produced mechanically. For that would be tantamount to saying that it is impossible (contradictory) for any understanding to present such a unity in the combination of a thing’s manifold without also thinking of the idea of that unity as causing it, in other words, without thinking of the production as intentional. But this consequence that an organized body cannot be produced mechanically would in fact follow if we were entitled to regard material beings as things in themselves. For then the unity that is the basis on which natural formations are possible would be only the unity of space, and yet space is not a basis responsible for the reality of products but is only their formal condition; space merely resembles the basis we are seeking inasmuch as no part in space can be determined except in relation to the whole (so that in its case too the possibility of the parts is based on the presentation of the whole). But in fact it is at least possible to consider the material world as mere appearance, and to think something as its substrate, as thing in itself (which is not appearance), and to regard this thing in itself as based on a corresponding intellectual intuition (even though not ours). In that way there would be for nature, which includes us as well, a supersensible basis of its reality, though we could not cognize this basis. Hence we would consider in terms of mechanical laws whatever is necessary in nature as an object of sense; but the harmony and unity of the particular laws of nature and of the forms based on them are contingent in terms of mechanical laws, and so this harmony and unity, as objects of reason, we would at the same time consider in terms of teleological laws (as, indeed, we would consider the whole of nature as a system). So we would judge nature in terms of two kinds of principles, and the mechanical kind of explanation would not be excluded by the teleological as if they contradicted each other.

This also allows us to see what we could otherwise have suspected, but could hardly have asserted with certainty and have proved: that although the principle of a mechanical derivation of purposive natural products is compatible with the teleological principle, the mechanical one could certainly not make the teleological one dispensable. In other words, when we deal with a thing that we must judge to be a natural purpose (i.e., when we deal with an organized being), though we can try on it all the laws of mechanical production that we know or may yet discover, and though we may indeed hope to make good progress with such mechanical laws, yet we can never account for the possibility of such a product without appealing to a basis for its production that is wholly distinct from the mechanical one, namely, a causality through purposes. Indeed, absolutely no human reason (nor any finite reason similar to ours in quality, no matter how much it may surpass ours in degree) can hope to understand, in terms of nothing but mechanical causes, how so much as a mere blade of grass produced.. For it seems that [wenn] judgment is quite unable to study, even if it restricts itself to experience as its guide, how such objects are possible, without using the teleological connection of causes and effects. Yet it also seems that for external objects as appearances we cannot possibly find an adequate basis that refers to purposes, but it seems instead that, even though this basis also lies in nature, we must still search for it only in nature’s supersensible substrate, even though all possible insight into that substrate is cut off from us: hence it seems [(German) so] that there is absolutely no possibility for us to obtain, from nature itself, bases with which to explain combinations in terms of purposes; rather, the character of the human cognitive power forces us to seek the supreme basis for such combinations in an original understanding, as cause of the world.

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§ 78
How the Principle of the Universal Mechanism of Matter and the Teleological Principle Can Be Reconciled in the Technic of Nature

Reason is tremendously concerned not to abandon the mechanism nature employs in its products, and not to pass over it in explaining them, since without mechanism we cannot gain insight into the nature of things. Even if it were granted that a supreme architect directly created the forms of nature as they have always been, or that he predetermined the ones that in the course of nature keep developing according to the same model, still none of this advances our cognition of nature in the least; for we do not know at all how that being acts, and what its ideas are that are supposed to contain the principles by which natural beings are possible, and so we cannot explain nature by starting from that being, i.e., by descending (in other words, a priori) from that being to nature. Or suppose we try to explain by ascending (in other words, a posteriori), i.e., we start from the forms of objects of experience because we think they display purposiveness, and then, to explain this purposiveness, we appeal to a cause that acts according to purposes: in that case our explanation would be quite tautologous and we would deceive reason with mere words – not to mention that with this kind of explanation we stray into the transcendent, where our cognition of nature cannot follow us and where reason is seduced to poetic raving, even though reason’s foremost vocation is to prevent precisely that.

On the other hand, it is just as necessary a maxim of reason that it not pass over the principle of purposes in dealing with the products of nature. For though this principle does indeed not help us grasp how these products originate, yet it is a heuristic principle for investigating the particular laws of nature.

TEXT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN

Masaccio, Santa Trinità (1425)

“IO FU[I] G[I]A QUEL CHE VOI S[I]ETE E QUEL CH[‘] I[O] SONO VO[I] A[N]C[OR] SARETE”

(I once was what you are and what I am you also will be)

IMAGE IN PUBLIC DOMAIN

Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is system.

—Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966)[i]

I.  Playing Dirty

“Dirt”—like “pornography” (I would argue)—should always be placed in quotation marks, or, taking a cue from Derrida’s early writing practice, should always be placed “under erasure” (sous rature), crossed-out, graphically.[ii]

_

Which does not mean XXX. On the contrary—

_

this strange double-gesture—i.e., to use and not use, at the same time—is a bit like “cheating,” or “playing dirty”—a kind of “abuse.”

 PLAY DIRTY vb. [1910s +] (org. US): to behave reprehensibly, to cheat.

—Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang

“Playing dirty,” here, will be a bit like playing fort/da between Dadaist graphic intervention and Heideggerian Da-sein.

Fig. 1: L.H.O.O.Q. (Marcel Duchamp, 1919).

Although Duchamp’s Dadaist gesture involved drawing a line through Art (capital A) in the form of a black moustache, we cannot, I think, simply repeat this gesture vis-à-vis “dirt” (or “pornography”), because, in a sense, the black line of Dadaist negativity (Art) “is” already a kind of “dirt” (or “pornography”) smeared across the face of Art, so that the attempt to draw a line through dirt (or pornography)—i.e., one that could leave a mark otherwise than moustache-on-moustache (and thus otherwise than the oppositional negation of the Dadaist “anti-”)—would entail risking what we might call a queer double-cross.

DOUBLE-CROSS vt. (1903): to cheat or deceive (someone) especially by doing something different from what you said you would do; to deceive by double-dealing: betray.

—Collins English Dictionary

The queer double-cross is always risky because one can imagine an army of hygienic book-burners, who would love nothing better than to rid the world of “dirt” (or “pornography”), scrawling X’s through these words. So, to place X’s through “dirt” (or “pornography”), one always risks being perceived as a queer double-crosser, playing into the hands of some right-wing conservative agenda.

_

On the other hand, one can just as easily imagine an army of left-wing liberals affirming the existence of “dirt” (or “pornography”) under the banner of XXX. Thus, both sides, I would say, are operating according to the same naive (empirical-realist) assumption: “I know it when I see the it.” Hence the necessity of the “queer double-cross.”

II.  Being Double-Crossed

The human being alone exists. Rocks are, but they do not exist. Trees are, but they do not exist. Horses are, but they do not exist. Angels are, but they do not exist. God is, but he [sic] does not exist. The proposition “the human being alone exists” does not at all mean that the human being alone is a real being while all other beings are unreal and mere appearances or human representations. The proposition “the human being exists” means: the human being is that being whose Being is distinguished by an open standing that stands in the unconcealedness of Being, proceeding from Being, in Being.

—Martin Heidegger, “Introduction to ‘What Is Metaphysics’”[iii]

To place “dirt” (or “pornography”) under erasure—to claim, as I do, that they “do not exist”—is thus to also risk repeating the arrogant, anthropocentric humanism of Heidegger above (“Rocks are, but they do not exist,” etc.). While Heidegger himself will later graphically cross-out words like “Being” (Sein) and “Ground” (Grund), he never (as far as I can tell) crosses-out the word “human,” despite his “Letter on ‘Humanism’” (1946). Indeed, when Heidegger crosses-out “Being” (or “Ground”), it is to exalt “human being” (Da-sein) in its supposedly unique, abyssal groundlessness (ab-gründig). Thus, another name for “Being double-crossed” might be Heidegger’s humanism of ek-sistence.

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With this precaution in mind, then, we can now turn to Heidegger’s “On the Question of Being” (1955), perhaps the most explicit statement of his graphic practice of “crossing out” (überqueren):

The crossing out of this word [] initially has only a preventative role, namely, that of preventing the almost ineradicable habit of representing “Being” as something standing somewhere on its own that then on occasion first comes face-to-face with human beings. In accordance with this way of representing matters, it appears as though the human being is excepted from “Being.” However, he [sic] is not only not excepted, i.e. not only included in “Being,” but “Being,” in needing the human being, is obliged to relinquish this appearance of independence.[iv]

If “crossing out,” here, designates a kind of co-implication, or co-constitutive relationality, then it would seem that the Heideggerian double-cross is far from the black line of Dadaist negation and its purported annihilation (Art). Indeed, it should be noted, “On the Question of Being” was originally titled Über “Die Linie” and is, in fact, a reading of Ernst Jünger’s Across the Line (Über Die Linie), and the latter’s diagnosis of “nihilism.” So, the question of “the line”—of its “crossing,” and of its relation to a certain (an)nihil(ation)ism—is at the very heart of this text. Not surprisingly, Heidegger quickly seeks to distance his practice of “crossing out” from any simplistic gesture of (nihilistic) negation:

The sign of the crossing through [Durchkreuzung] cannot, however, be the merely negative sign of a crossing out [Durchstreichung]. It points, rather, toward the four regions of the fourfold and their being gathered in the locale of this crossing through. (QB 310-311)

Not “merely [a] negative sign of crossing out,” Heidegger’s X, instead, is meant to designate a kind of fourfold gathering, which, once again, ultimately exalts “human being” (Da-sein) as the (k)not where these lines cross (i.e., a schematic variation on his “the-human-being-is-the-shepherd-of-Being” motif).[v] But what, then, “gathers” in the (k)not of Heidegger’s überqueren ?

GRUND n. from an archaic verb meaning “to grind” and was originally “coarse sand, sandy soil, earth.” It has acquired a variety of senses, and corresponds closely, if not exactly, to “ground”; “soil, land; (building) plot [foundation]; field; bottom…”

—A Heidegger Dictionary[vi]

III.  Double-Crossed Laces

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The question of the underneath as ground, earth, then as sole, shoes, sock— stocking—foot, etc., cannot be foreign to the “great question” of the thing as hypokeimenon, then as subjectum.

—Jacques Derrida, “Restitutions” (1978)[vii]

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From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil.

—Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935)[viii]

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Shoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the dining-table.

—Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (36-37)

If the Heideggerian double-cross (X) thus involves a kind of interlacing (such that “‘Being,’ in needing the human being, is obliged to relinquish [its] appearance of independence”), then couldn’t we say something similar about Douglas’s (structuralist) notion of “dirt” (“where there is dirt there is system” [36]), and not only because Douglas’ main example of “dirt” (cited above) involves “shoes”? While perhaps not the “peasant shoes” (OA 32) invoked by Heidegger (and Derrida) above, Douglas’ “shoes” are nevertheless equally remarkable, I would say, in their (k)notty interlacing. And yet, in her consideration, “Dirt Fetish,” from her book Imperial Leather (1995), even Anne McClintock seems to unwittingly sweep these (k)notty “shoes” under the rug when summarizing Douglas’ argument:

A broom in a kitchen closet is not dirty, whereas lying on a bed it is. Sex with one’s spouse is not dirty, whereas conventionally the same act with a prostitute is.[ix]

But, as we’ve seen, Douglas’ main example of “dirt” isn’t a “broom”—it’s “shoes.” So, what gives?

Fig. 2: Old Shoes With Laces (Vincent Van Gogh, 1886).

If “shoes” figure crucially in both Douglas’ claims about “dirt” and Heidegger’s claims about “The Origin of the Work of Art,” then these (k)notty “shoes,” I would say, cannot be so easily swept under the rug. Indeed, their interlacing suggests that our quote from Heidegger’s “On the Question of Being” can be provocatively rewritten using “dirt” and “system” for “Being” and “human being:”

The crossing out of this word [dirt] initially has only a preventative role, namely, that of preventing the almost ineradicable habit of representing “dirt” as something standing somewhere on its own that then on occasion first comes face-to-face with a system. In accordance with this way of representing matters, it appears as though a system is excepted from “dirt.” However, it is not only not excepted, i.e., not only included in “dirt,” but “dirt,” in needing a system, is obliged to relinquish this appearance of independence.

Although Douglas herself never graphically crosses-out “dirt,” I think this Heideggerian rewriting (above) helps to underline a certain (k)notty interlacing of “dirt” and “system” (“dirt,” as Douglas says, “is never a unique, isolated event” [36]). But if Heidegger can thus be used (and abused) in this way to help us think about “dirt,” then, likewise, Douglas, I think, can be used (and abused) to help us think about “The Origin of the Work of Art.” There is a (k)notty interlacing, in other words, between “dirt” and “The Origin of the Work of Art.”

Fig. 3: The Shoes (Vincent Van Gogh, 1887).

IV . Dirty Pictures

Could it be that, like a glove turned inside out, the shoe sometimes has the convex “form” of the foot (penis), and sometimes the concave form enveloping the foot (vagina)?

—Jacques Derrida, “Restitutions” (1978)[vii]

In his reading of Heidegger’s reading of Van Gogh’s “shoes” in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Derrida zeroes in on, among many other things, the undone laces, which, in their promiscuous crisscrossing beyond the proper field of “the picture” seem to undo the parergon (framework) of “inside”/“outside” so crucial to the identity of “Art.” In fact, the punctured leather orifices of Van Gogh’s “shoes” become, for Derrida, like so many ambiguous erogenous zones of folded skin, or what we might call queer hymenal membranes. Thus, Derrida not only crisscrosses the (k)nottiness of Van Gogh’s “shoes” (“Art”) into a realm typically associated with “pornography” (“dirty pictures”) —i.e., a series of disseminating, copulating bodily organs—but he even reads Heidegger’s essay on “The Origin of the Work of Art” as if it was itself the “dirty thoughts of a dirty old man,” i.e., the masturbatory fantasy of a shoe-fetishist:

Fig. 4: The Shoes (Vincent Van Gogh, 1886-1887).

Did Heidegger need these shoes to be those of a peasant? And having crossed that line, did he need to see, from below, from the stocking, a peasant woman? A peasant woman standing up? (Derrida R, 358)

Alluding here to Freud’s essay on “Fetishism” (1920), Derrida projects Heidegger into the ambivalent (dis)position of the traumatized (male) child looking up under the dress (“from below,” at shoe level), at the hol(e)y (m)other. But if Heidegger thus fills up Van Gogh’s empty, knotty “shoes” (the inhuman prosthesis) with his own naughty fantasy of a (human) “peasant woman,” isn’t this precisely because “peasant shoes are closer to the earth,” as Derrida says (R 358), i.e., closer to “dirt”?

That would, indeed, seem to be the basic assumption of this (k)notty fantasy: “peasant shoes” = “dirty.” Heidegger even critiques Van Gogh’s “shoes” along these lines:

From Van Gogh’s painting we cannot even tell where these shoes stand. There is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant shoes in or to which they might belong—only an undefined space. There are not even clods of soil from the field or the field-path sticking to them, which would hint at their use. (Heidegger OA, 33).

Unlaced, useless, unemployed. As Heidegger says, “there are not even clods of soil from the field” stuck to the souls of Van Gogh’s “peasant shoes.” And yet—

Fig. 5: Three Pairs of Shoes (Vincent Van Gogh, 1886-1887).

And yet, “in the field”—i.e., actually laced-up and employed—these “peasant shoes” would disappear “in use.” In fact, it is the nature of mere “equipment” like “peasant shoes” (but unlike “Art,” apparently), to disappear in their reliable use. “In the field,” in other words, the “peasant woman,” (unlike the Heideggerian shoe-fetishist, apparently) simply wears her shoes without giving them a second thought:

The peasant woman, on the other hand, simply wears them…. The equipmental quality of the equipment consists indeed of its usefulness. But this usefulness itself rests in… reliability…. This equipmental quality of equipment was discovered… not by a description and explanation of a pair of shoes actually present; not by a report about the process of making shoes; and also not by the observation of the actual use of shoes occurring here and there [“in the field”]; but only by bringing ourselves before Van Gogh’s painting. (OA 34-35; emphasis added)

Note: “usefulness” is also that which apparently distinguishes “pornography” from “Art”—like shoes, “pornography” disappears “in use,” i.e., in arousing masturbation and provoking orgasm. “Pornography” is thus closer to mere “equipment” than “Art.” Of course, Derrida’s reading of Heidegger (as I’ve been insinuating here) demonstrates, among other things, how all these apparently clean-cut distinctions are inextricably tied in (k)nots.

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V. (K)nots

The stone in the road is a thing, as is the clod in the field…. A man is not a thing.

—Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935)

I am nothing but dust and ashes…

—Genesis 18:27

Since “shoes,” for Heidegger, occupy an intermediary position (“equipment”) between “thing” and “Art”—i.e., the uncanny (dis)position of techne—the brilliance of Van Gogh’s painting (for Heidegger) is that it makes “equipment” show up “as such.” In the field, in use, “peasant shoes” disappear. It’s only as useless, unlaced, and unemployed (in Van Gogh’s “Art”) that “equipment” appears “as such.” Similarly, we might say, “dirt,” in the field, does not show up. There is nothing “dirty,” in other words, about “dirt” in a field, or in a garden. In fact, “dirt” doesn’t exist there. This seems to be Douglas’ Heideggerian point: “Dirt” can only appear when it is tracked into a bedroom, for example, or into a kitchen (“matter out of place”): “Shoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the dining-table” (Douglas 36-37).

Indeed, to the extent that “dirt” needs a “system,” as Douglas says, it’s unclear how far her (structuralist) argument actually departs from Heideggerian humanism, in which “Being” needs “human being” (Da-sein). “System” and “Da-sein,” in other words, fulfill the same (theological) desire for a center, or a place “to stand.”

SYSTEM n. 1610s, Latin systemat-, from Greek systema (“organized whole, a whole organized by parts”), from synistana = syn– (“together”) + histanai (“to stand”).

—Merriam-Webster English Dictionary

Not surprisingly, Derrida, whose essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966) appears the same year as Douglas’ Purity and Danger (1966), does not turn to “dirt,” but rather to a series of paradoxical figures, including “the remainder” (reste) and “the trace” (or arche-trace), in an attempt to dislocate the proper standing of this (theological) center. In fact, as Derrida notes, “The ‘theological’ is a determined moment in the total movement of the trace” (OG 47), rather than vice versa. Although too-easily compared to a “footprint,” the Derridian “trace” (“remainder”) would have to be a very uncanny “footprint” indeed, i.e., a “footprint” without any preceding presence, or any living (“human”) foot as its “author” (“center”), a “footprint,” then, without a “system” to stand on. A “footprint” without “dirt”?

Fig. 6: Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet (detail) (Jacopo Tintoretto, 1575-1580).

It is rare for Derrida himself to associate “the trace” (“remainder”) with “excrement,” although he does, on at least one occasion, insinuate this “dirty” possibility. Like his many graphic interventions—whether writing “under erasure” (sous rature) or writing diffèrance with an “a”— Derrida suggests that “differential marks” relate “matter to writing, to the remainder, to death, to the phallus, to excrement, to the infant, to semen, etc., or at least to everything in this that is not subject to the [Christo-Hegelian] relève.“[x] And it is this graphic “trace” (“remainder”), of course, that one is tempted to call “dirt”—in some naive, substantializing move (“the temptation of Christ”?).

And yet, isn’t there something out-standing about Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet (cf. figure 6)? Shall we speak of the “Art” of (Christ’s) debasement (becoming-“dirt”; becoming-“man”)? Shall we speak of the “pornography” of (Christ’s) foot-fetishism (becoming-“aroused”)? To believe either option (“Art”/”pornography”), I think, would be to affirm a (Christo-Hegelian) theology of sublation/sublimation, in which even the X of Heidegger’s graphic practice of crossing-out (Überqueren) ends up becoming a living sign of some fourfold gathering, i.e., a sign of the cross.

So, what is “dirt”? “What is… ?” as Heidegger says, is “one of those questions that must stab itself in the heart” (QB 316).  X marks the spot.

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ashes to ashes, dust to dust

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VI. Dirty Boots

Notes

[i] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo [1966] (London: Routledge, 1988), 36. Hereafter cited in the text.

[ii] On Derrida’s practice of writing “sous rature” (and its Heideggerian links), see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology [1967], trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 44 & 60. Hereafter cited in the text as OG. See also Gayatri Spivak, “Translator’s Preface,” xiv-xvii.

[iii] Martin Heidegger, “Introduction to ‘What Is Metaphysics’” [1949], trans. Walter Kaufmann, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 284.

[iv] Martin Heidegger, “On the Question of Being” [1955], trans. William McNeill, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 310. Translation modified. Hereafter cited as QB.

[v] See Martin Heidegger, “Letter on ‘Humanism’” [1946], trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 252.

[vi] Michael Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 82.

[vii] Jacques Derrida, “Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing [Pointure],” in The Truth In Painting [1978], trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987), 285. Hereafter cited as R.

[viii] Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” [1935], in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), Cambridge UP, 1998), 252. Hereafter cited as OA.

[ix] Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 153.

[x] Jacques Derrida, Positions (1972), trans. Alan Bass (Chicage: U of Chicago Press, 1981), 106.
 

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CHRISTIAN HITE

“Hiding in Rest,” Elin de Jong (2014)

 
In 2014 Elin de Jong began Elin Wanderlüst, a natural dye garden to focus on experimentation and documentation of natural dye and the making of natural dyed fabrics. Each skein of yarn or piece of fabric is colored with natural dyes, using techniques dating back as far as the Middle Ages.

Colors are achieved entirely through natural dyes made from plants, including roots, bark, wood, flowers, leaves and insects.

It can take days to make each color unique.
 

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ELIN DE JONG