Today’s post is like that moment in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape when Krapp eats a banana and, several minutes later, slips on the peel he left on the floor. But in place of Krapp, we want you to imagine Trump, and for the banana, a gun. Maybe Banksy can help us visualize this: Arming teachers, […]
We have only allocated an hour to write this post, so we don’t have time to discuss that infamous memo (we mean here the Nunes memo, not Trump himself) Given this time-crunch we’re merely going to see how the posts from our allocated two week period from last year (Jan. 23-Feb 5) fit into the […]
After yesterday’s rather extreme post that called for a “Classics without Antiquity”, aka the grounding of any engagement between Classicists and contemporary artists in the abandoning of antiquity (at least temporarily) by the former so as to better immerse themselves in contemporary debates, today I feel a palpable sense of responsibility to offer some kind […]
The ancient Greek reader didn’t own his own voice; the act of audible reading dispossessed him of it. “If he lends his voice to these mute signs, the text appropriates it: his voice becomes the voice of the written text,” Svenbro stresses. “He has lent his voice, relinquished it.” Is there a debt to repay […]
I first encountered the installation The Refusal of Time by South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) in the pages of Enrique Vila-Matas’ The Illogic of Kassel – a fictional account of dOCUMENTA (13) back in 2012. While I have not seen the work in person, I have just read the publication produced for that […]
Over the past few days, several things have occurred that have set me to worrying (somewhat more than usual) about the future of the university. I am not only thinking about some immediate and disturbing developments at my own specific institution (Ohio State University), but also about the very survival of the university as an […]
Tomorrow is the last day of documenta 14, the exhibition that split itself between Athens and Kassel. To mark the closure of this unique experiment, e-flux has published a joint statement by many of the artists who participated. What struck me about this statement was the way in which the living artists emphasized the significance […]
Today I left behind the sun of the South in Malaga, and traveled North, to the rain of Kassel. At the same time, I also felt like I was leaving behind that other city of the South, with which this German city has (so generously) shared this year’s documenta exhibition, and it would be part […]
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956 – Allen Ginsberg ‘America’ When Plato died, the only material possessions he left behind were a small garden next to the Academy, two slaves, a bowl with which he made offerings to the gods and a tiny […]
[Minus Plato is undergoing some technical difficulties with image uploads so I apologize for the scarcity of pictures to accompany this post. I hope to have this rectified before tomorrow] When I woke up this morning I had a somewhat modest plan for the day: to visit the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) by way […]