I have seen books about artists come and go, but one figure stays constant: Cy Twombly. What hold does this scribbler have over him? Before my death, I remember one particular period of him flitting from white Twombly tome to off-white Twombly tome (whither this whiteness?), and in his frenzy even slipping beneath the cover […]
As I edited the film, I heard him laughing and singing to himself, and taking such pleasure in it all, asking me in his particularly resonant speaking voice, “Did you get that boat??” “Did you film that bird?” “Did you see the light behind the dance?” – Tacita Dean on her film with and about […]
[F]inding it unacceptable to sell these immaterial zones for money Yves Klein, 1957, from “Invisible: Art of the Unseen: 1957-2012) (2012) Is composition important to you? Only in the sense that there are four corners. – David Schutter from “Reluctance to Reveal: A Conversation with David Schutter” (2017)
We live in a world of unreality and dreams. – Simone Weil, 1942, from ‘You Are Here’ by Nicholas R. Bell in “Wonder” (2015) Forgive me, please, but I would like to speak of something else, to speak of Tubal – Rosee Rosen from “The Blind Merchant 1989-1991”
Ah, books, books, books all over everything For you humans, one could ask where can we live but days? But for we library-ghosts, aka the spirits of dead libraries, where can we live but books? It is too soon for me to tell you how this particular library died or how libraries die in general, […]
‘the library of images unseen,’ [is] a radical alternative to the garbage-images of the video-idiots of our time. – Mario Perniola Fellow Reader, I realize that I has started these dispatches very much in the middle of things and you must be wondering who exactly is speaking. Please understand that I cannot tell you the […]
A ghost, even of a library, recognizes its own. I see myself reflected in Friedl Body’s 1975 photograph of the dark, hollowed eyes of Harry Smith starting out at me from page 150 of Jonas Mekas’ A Dance with Fred Astaire (Anthology Editions, 2017). In 1987-1988, Smith – musicologist, filmmaker, painter, anthropologist and paper-plane collector […]