Call for Participation in Art Project “People of the Other Side”

The Love Letter Building was an art project by HA Schult in summer 2001 in Berlin. While the old Postfuhramt (a building at Oranienburger Strasse) was reconstructed the whole scaffolding was covered with a canvas-cover that was printed all over with handwritten love letters by normal people like students who were asked by their art teachers to participate in the project.

 

While drawing today on my Israel canvas something made me remember this project. My thoughts didn’t stop with the memory but my brain worked on. And so I want to invite you to participate in something similar – if only on a smaller scale as I have no scaffolding to cover but not less important.

 

I believe from my own experiences and from the bottom of my heart that it is less easy to lump people and project hate on a generalized group if you can put names, stories, faces to the group you may at the extreme want to dislodge or even erase.  This is what my story ‘One King’s Children’ is about. And hence I want to do exactly this in an art project. With little notes and letters about yourself, little pictures, photos, knitting etc. that you think, might represent the one thing you are most, best, I want to create a “Wall of People of the Other Side”.

 

Foremost I aim of course, seeing my background, at Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. Yet, as the lines of one camp vs. another are not limited to one tiny spot on the planet (sic!) I don’t want to limit the project. If you want to participate to give your group/ people a face you are cordially invited.

 

What do I ask you to send me?: All I ask for is one small, nice handwritten message in English (as I and everyone who will see the wall must be able to know what it says and (bad) English is the language spoken by most in the world) about one thing you think you are. At the end of ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ they say something along the lines: some people are born to be mothers, some people are born to know everything about buttons, some people are born to create clocks… So, what are you born to be? What represents you best?

 

I want only small things you can send me by normal mail as I hope for many people to participate. So if you read this and like the idea, send the message out to your friends inviting them to take part as well. And don’t forget to drop me a line (either here or via the Email address on my frontpage) so that I can give you further instructions as where to send your letter.

Israel (WIP) and a Call for Participation in an Art Project

Israel (acrylic and sand on canvas 100×120 cm, still WIP)

For the call for participation in an art project aimed at a better understanding please scroll down to the end of this post. Thank you.

This is what I am working on right now (if a very bad sore throat hadn’t sent me to bed early today). I am sorry that the picture is a bit fussy. Yet, you can still see that I colored the sky already and the sand with the shadow of the beach chair. And you can see the pencil outline of what will soon be the beach chair image. All in all, the new pic is about the image of Israel I have in my mind.

 

Do you know this kind of beach chairs that were invited at the beaches of the Baltic Sea? They are quite sturdy and protect you against all kinds of influences – rain and sun, heavy winds, sandy feet and curious eyes. They are comfortable in their own way, invite for a pause and offer room for storage. But they are as well pretty inflexible and too heavy to move around all the time to adjust them to the fast changing circumstances.

 

The image of such a beach chair I drew is slightly adjusted to the Mediterranean climate. It’s made of wood and not of reed and the fabric will be of lighter colors. But you can still see where the original idea came from.

 

The chair is situated in a beautiful surrounding. The bright, sunny sky and the white sand bring along an air of peace and eternity. The image of the palm tree in the chair as a symbol of a tree of life add to the feel of eternity. Leaves of the palm tree have been chopped of during past time. But this made the trunk only more sturdy. From the heart of the trunk new green grows and the leaves fill every angle of the Israeli world past and present.   

 

But the chair, meant to be a protection by itself, needs to be heavily protected by walls and barbwire. Even these measures can’t prevent the constant pinpricks of Qassam rockets, attacking the nerves of the inhabitants, their property, their health and their lives. If you add the cruelty of suicide bombs and bombs you might have found the reason for the preponderance of military, aggressive thoughts that throw dark shadows onto the paradise. But these shadows are, what the world looks at first as they become darker.

 

OK, this rounds up some of my ideas that brought me to draw this picture exactly as I do. While I do the manual work of giving my thoughts a shape my brain is already working on the next ideas for pictures to ‘One King’s Children’. In my last post I already published the text ‘Dear Mr. PM-To-Be’ I will use for another canvas that will feature as a background the cover of my Israeli passport. For the exhibition/ public reading I will also add a self portrait of me/ Lea.

 

Yet, for what I plan now to be the main piece I want to invite you all to help me. ‘One King’s Children’ has many messages one should think about. But one of the main messages is that it is much harder to live aggressive, inhuman, xenophobic ideas if you can put a normal, perhaps even lovely, loving face to the people on the other side. You think twice if you can lump together and generalize if you have some kind of connection to those affected by the lumping together.

 

Hence, with the Love Letter Building we once had here in Berlin in mind, I want to create a wall of “people you used to hate until you got around to know them” featuring handwritten letters and/ or small artwork (pictures, photos, knitting etc.) giving the common Israeli, Palestinian, Jew or Arab in particular but if you want to the English, American, German, French or whatever you are in general a face and a meaning.

 

All I ask for is a small handwritten message in English (as I and everyone who will see it must be able to know what it says and (bad) English is the language spoken by most in the world) about one thing you think you are. At the end of ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ they say something along the lines: some people are born to be mothers, some people are born to know everything about buttons, some people are born to create clocks… So, what are you born to be? What represents you best?

 

I want only small things you can send me by normal mail as I hope for many people to participate. So if you read this and like the idea, send the message out to your friends inviting them to take part as well. And don’t forget to drop me a line so that I can give you further instructions as where to send your letter.

Welcome to the Heavenly Rose

You see me in tears – of joy but also of farewell. I finished today my series Hogwarts and Dante’s 9 Spheres of Heaven. The last pic is painted, the last essay written. Well, now I can start to prepare the online vernisage with contest and all. Stay tuned for it, I will post it soon.

But for now here the essay for Jupiter and the picture and essay for Empyrean Heaven:

They then displayed themselves in five times seven

consonants and vowels, and I saw these letters

singly, and in the order they were traced.

DILIGITE IUSTITIAM — these letters,

placed together, verb and noun, came first,

QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM, last.
Paradiso, Canto 18, Lines 88 – 93

 

Diligite Iustitiam Qui Iudicatis Terram – Love justice, you that are the judges of the Earth. These are the opening words of the biblical book of Wisdom. It is also the request of the soul sparks on the sixth sphere of Jupiter.

 

Jupiter is located in Dante’s heavenly order between the hot passionate planet Mars and Saturn, that is usually described as cold star (you will see in the next picture that Dante was of another opinion when it came to Saturn). Jupiter, temperate and pale, balances the two. For the poet it is like a blush of modesty.

A blush of modesty that passes from the face of the heavenly, jovial father – as this is what Jupiter means. The word derives from archaic Latin ‘Iovis’ or Latin ‘(D)is’ = God and Latin ‘pater’ = father. As ‘Heavenly Father’ Jupiter was the king of Roman Gods, ruler of cosmic justice and father of many.

 

Like a careful knitter he loved knitting patterns. He placed and knotted his threads with deliberation in ever new ways. Occupied with the moment, as the father and ruler of them all he had to consider the overall picture to do justice to all in his rulings, so that his creation became not unbalanced, one sided, unjust – in one word: ruined.

 

Knitting is a recurrent theme in the Harry Potter series as well. Hagrid knits what appears to be a canary-yellow circus tent in the train to London when he takes Harry for his first trip to Diagon Alley (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5: Diagon Alley). Dumbledore admits freely to loving knitting patterns when he takes Harry to Horace Slughorn to use the Boy-who-lived as a bait the to-become potion teacher swallows unchewed (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 4: Horace Slughorn).

 

However, most prominently tied to the subject of knitting is the mother of all – Molly Weasley.

 

‘I think I know who that one’s from,’ said Ron, going a bit pink and pointing to a very lumpy parcel. ‘My mum. I told her you didn’t expect any presents and – oh, no,’ he groaned, ‘she’s made you a Weasley jumper.’

 

Harry had torn open the parcel to find a thick, hand-knitted sweater in emerald green and a large box of home-made fudge.

 

‘Every year she makes us a jumper,’ said Ron, unwrapping his own, ‘and mine’s always maroon.’

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 12: The Mirror of Erised

 

She even adorns her sweaters with single letters like the ones spelled out by Jupiter’s sparks.

 

In that torch of Jupiter I watched

the sparkling of the love resplendent there

make signs, before my eyes, of our speech.

And as birds risen from the river’s edge,

seeming to celebrate their pleasure in their food,

form now a rounded arc, and now another shape,

so, radiant within their lights, the holy creatures

sang as they flew and shaped themselves

in figures, now D, now I, now L.

Paradiso, Canto 18 Lines 70 – 78

 

The last letter that Dante sees on Jupiter is the ‘M’ of terram. Together with the lily that wraps itself around the lines of the M and the eagle flying high above it, the M marks Jupiter as the planet of monarchy and just rulers.

 

Yet the M can be read also as a symbol for matriarchy, especially as it is the last M of the word terram. The earth is usually seen as an archetypical symbol for the mother. Seen upside down it can also be the first letter ‘W’ of the name Weasley – Molly Weasley.

 

In the Harry Potter series Molly Weasley is not Jupiter but Jumiter. She represents the ups and downs of the archetype. She is the birth-giving, protecting woman who tries to make the Burrow and later Grimmauld Place #4 as well the most cosy place on earth against all odds. She is the personified fertility and literally the magical authority at her place. In all the poverty the Weasleys live she provides plenty not only to her children but also to everyone she can pull under her wings.

 

Yet, as already hinted at in the Mercury essay, she represents also the destroying, devouring mother. Like a Norn she is inescapable. Her voice echoes even in the halls of Hogwarts, it is repeated however reluctant by Sirius in the fireplace and follows Percy to London. The image of Percy all tied up in a Weasley sweater unable to move (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 12: The Mirror of Erised) symbols best the way Molly almost suffocates her loved ones with her caring while not considering their needs and wishes.

 

One could say, her knitting has some flaws. Yet, in the end, when you put everything on a scale, the positive aspects outweigh anything negative – symbolized by Percy’s return. And the motherly dragon spreads its wings one more time to destroy its black aspect – the power hungry femme fatale Belatrix LeStrange.

 

 

With the voice and bearing of a guide

who has discharged his duty, she began: ‘We have issued

from the largest body to the Heaven of pure light,

‘light intellectual, full of love,

love of true good, full of joy,

joy that surpasses every sweetness.

Paradiso, Canto 30, lines 37 – 42

 

In our little excursion through centuries spanning medieval classic to contemporary literature we come now to an end that is really the beginning. Piccarda explained as early as Canto 4 of Paradiso that everywhere in Paradise is Paradise. Yet as a concession to the limited human understanding Dante is introduced to a split up version where the blessed are categorized like in a lexicon.

 

One could also say the blessed were planted like lovely flowers into different beds of the same garden. The original Hebrew version of the Bible speaks of the Paradise as ‘gan’ what means garden. Only when translated into Greek gan became paradeisos. And as already stated in the very beginning the Greek word paradeisos deceives from a Persian word meaning ‘walled-around place’.

 

So, the question remains: Is Hogwarts just another ‘walled around place’? Or is Hogwarts Paradise?

 

‘You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago – by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school houses are named after them: Goderic Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution.’

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 9: The Writing on the Wall

 

The information ‘over one thousand years ago’ places Hogwarts early years right into the deepest darkness of the medieval, a time not really connected with light, love and joy. Yet it was a time when alchemy was seriously considered by many smart men. And it was also around this time when Dante was allowed his glimpse of Paradiso.

 

Hogwarts was erected as a school, a place to learn the basics of witchcraft and wizardry. The students allowed are unique in their inborn ability to do magic. As imaginative as the subjects taught sound however, the teachers are no forerunners in the field of modern teaching. It is not only the ghost, Professor Binns, who sticks strictly to the facts and who requests of his students pure memorization of facts.

 

Memorization is the basic method of teaching at Hogwarts and it is what is asked for in the exams as well. None of the teacher ever asks the students to research the origins of the magic ability or the foundation of spells and hexes. But this would be the basis for creativity, research and development

 

The closest we get to discover the basis of magic is when Professor Snape teaches the properties of herbs and fungi and how to mix them for a potion. Yet, as his stay lone efforts it is no wonder that most of the students fail completely when Slughorn introduces Galpalot’s Law.

 

When we then realize that the house system adds tremendous tension to the daily atmosphere at school, Hogwarts is far from a paradisiacal place. However, Hogwarts isn’t what it seems at the first view.

 

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn’t open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren’t really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was so very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other and Harry was sure the coats of armour could walk.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8: The Potion Master

 

The school alone tickles curiosity. It holds legendary chambers, hidden pathways to the outside and a Room of Requirement that is where for you in times of need equipped with everything you lack. And it is home to many very curious folk: speaking and meandering portraits, walking armours, ghosts, house elves, other students and teachers, who all have their own stories to discover.

 

If that isn’t enough the library is filled with thousands of books that contain the knowledge of millennia. If you want to discover and research, as a student of Hogwarts you have your space to move. Other as with the Dursleys, where questions and imagination were forbidden, explorative behaviour isn’t discouraged at Hogwarts. In the case of Harry with his invisibility cloak and the Marauders Map it is even actively encouraged.

 

Furthermore, the castle is thoroughly protected against invasion by ancient magic and every spell available. A constant and direct threat from the outside that could realize every second would be too much as opposites clash constantly in the inside due to the house system. Walled up, hidden and protected as it is, Hogwarts establishes a temenos – a place where individuation can take place.

 

What Jung called individuation, the miracle of self-realisation, is called in alchemy ‘the squaring of the circle’ – the mysterious is ‘squared’ with physical reality.

 

Physical reality? Since Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle we know that subatomic particles can’t be accurately defined in time and space. They have, as physicists call it, only a tendency to exist. Hence, as everything existing is build up of subatomic particles, our physical reality and ultimately we humans as well have only a tendency to exist. The physical reality is therefore understood as a constant evolving process and each little thing is a whole world itself. And so the whole universe is in each of us.

 

The experience of the Self brings a feeling of standing on solid ground inside oneself, on a patch of inner eternity which even physical death cannot touch.

Mary-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung, his Myth in our Time

 

Hogwarts is the solid ground that gives the students a home in the outside world as well as in their mind. Only if the students lower their protection and that of the school, Voldemort and the ideas he stand for have a chance to cling to the minds. Otherwise, Hogwarts and his inhabitants are a patch of outer and inner eternity, a temenos, a gan, a paradeisos, the same place Dante saw on Good Friday 1300. Was Dante perhaps truly magical?

Jupiter Shines Bright Tonight

The most important thing first, here is the new picture:

And yes, it was a tough call. Yes, it was only a deadline I set for myself, but still. I am now completely worn out, like I pured everything I had in me for this weekend in this one picture. Well, I guess I will sleep now and see how you all like it. Leave me a message on this, will you pleeaaaaseeeee!?

Knitting fast on Jupiter ;)

I just stop by shortly at the end of this Saturday to present a little sneak peek on some work in progress. Just the other day I posted the draft of the Jupiter Sphere. I managed to find some time and oportuntiy to purchase some canvas (btw all the pics in this series are 70 cm x 100 cm, acrylic on canvas). And as I can’t see any white canvas without feeling the urge to cover it with some color I started off right away.

After a day of work I got this far:

The ‘knitting’ is done. Now I am in the progress to create Jupiter and its four greatest moons that will make up the ‘M’ for monarchy (like in Dante’s Paradiso). Or is it here more for materiachy (think Molly Weasley)? Or is it really a ‘W’ for Weasley? Any way I am at the planets and moons.

They will have to wait until tomorrow though as it is late here already. Still, I hope to finish on the pic tomorrow. So, stay tuned for more color and more information. Good Night.

Knitting and Roses

Since I have no canvas anymore until I can get my hands on a car and get some new I use the time drafting the remaining spheres. What is left? Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars and the Empyrean Heaven. I have a clear picture in mind for all but the Fixed Stars. Even though Saturn has been very tricky my train ride to work once again proved very inspiring.

But I don’t want to reveal too much before I have something on paper. So, let’s talk about two spheres that made it already into my sketch pad – Empyrean Heaven and Jupiter:

Obviously, I was inspired by the Heavenly Rose mentioned in Dante’s Paradiso. The rose appears here not only in its natural shape with the portraits inserted. It also appears once again in its stylised form in the labyrinth. I used the same motive but much smaller in the first picture of the series in the upper left-hand corner.

Oh yes, I combined the Dante inspired motive with an idea of JKR’s Harry Potter series. As we are on the ninth and last Sphere of Paradiso we are also on the last level of Hogwarts, the seventh floor. And here is the Headmaster’s office located. One very prominent feature of this ofice are the talking portraits of the former Headmasters. They sit at the wall of the office like the saints sit in the Heavenly Rose. So, it was only logical to bring both ideas in one pic.

And here we move back a bit to Jupiter. I chose Molly Weasley for this sphere as she fits the idea of a strict but just ruler (and she has almost as many children as Jupiter has moons [insert rolling eye smiley]). As the inhabitants become less human in their shape as we ascent through the spheres of Paradiso I rather use an idea about her than her picture. And as ruling is very similar to knitting (you tie in threads/ people into the position they best fit your plans) her fondness of knitting inspired me to this sketch.

I need to thank the best hand model of the world for providing me with some photos of knitting – my friend Chan. You can see what her hands create on her blog Chan Knits . I hope she doesn’t mind me linking this to her page.