Westerner , the so called "Uncle Sam", San Francisco, February 1896, Aby Warburg, © The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London
"In San Francisco I caught a fleeting glimpse of the type of man who overthrew the cult of the serpent and overcame the fear of lightning—the descendant of the indigenous race and of the gold-digger who expelled the Indians: Uncle Sam in his tall hat walking proudly along the street past a pseudo-classical rotunda electric wire. And away above his top hat runs the electric wire. In this copper-snake, invented by Edison, he has wrested the lightning from nature."
A lecture on Serpent Ritual, Aby M. Warburg
intersection
an Aberration of Perspective
This sequence of photographs (including the above intersection) were taken during the summer of 2017. They have their interpretive origin in the conclusion to Aby Warburg's A Lecture on Serpent Ritual and specifically the image titled Uncle Sam, which were derived from his 1895-96 travels within America.
A region amid the American midwest, having existed prior to and now 121 years since the appearance of Warburg’s uniquely iconological lens, depicts this aberrated perspective of those who expelled the Indians. Modern chaos having since been engendered by adherents of the machine age—increasingly apathetic while destructively blind toward an enduring future.
Images of sloughed off architectural remnants mirror in microcosm a worldwide human population’s excessive demands upon what is increasingly our universally lost Nature.
U-2 auto sales
kitchen toms
backyard vista
chimneys--1,2,3
"and now far-off smoke pearls from homestead rooftops and from high mountains the greater shadows fall."
Virgil, Eclogues I
--untitled--
making Manifest
--untitled--
"N"
"Nature is Hebrew consonants from which the vowels are missing, an equation with at least one unknown, and we can fathom this unknown only by action, not by contemplation in accordance with rules."
J. G. Hamann
Greece Revived
broken pediment, eyebrows and overhang
for rent (1 of 2)
for rent (2 of 2)
Huge Yard Sale
roses &
"Now go, the will within us being one:
you be my guide, Lord, master from this day,
movie time
I say to him; and when he had onward moved
I entered on the deep and savage path."
Dante, Inferno, Canto II of the Divine Comedy
mimosa & cotton mill
power lines
"Electricity enslaved, the lightning held captive in the wire, has produced a civilization which has no use for heathen poetry. But what does it put in its place? The forces of nature are no longer seen in anthropomorphic shapes; they are conceived as an endless succession of waves, obedient to the touch of a man's hand. With these waves the civilization of the mechanical age is destroying what natural science, itself emerging out of myth, had won with such vast effort—the sanctuary of devotion, the remoteness needed for contemplation."
A lecture on Serpent Ritual, Aby M. Warburg
tree of life
" 'Contemporary man has not been trained to use power well,' because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience. Each age tends to have only a meagre awareness of its own limitations. It is possible that we do not grasp the gravity of the challenges now before us. 'The risk is growing day by day that man will not use his power as he should'; in effect, 'power is never considered in terms of responsibility of choice which is inherent in freedom since its only norms are taken from alleged necessity, from either utility or security'. But human beings are not completely autonomous. Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint."
from ¶ No. 105, Laudato Si', Pope Francis (Romano Guardini comments within single quotes), © Libreria Editrice Vaticana
SO-1884.
"Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology 'know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race,' that 'in the most radical sense of the term power is the motive—a lordship over all.' As a result, 'man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature.' Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one's alternative creativity are diminished."
from ¶ No. 108, Laudato Si', Pope Francis (Romano Guardini comments within single quotes), © Libreria Editrice Vaticana
reflection
See HEN & BEN the shoe men
nestled
shut
Optimistic Orange
...the difference between nature and society.
the sky is falling
"...help in extremity, so that
under Thy guidance
safely may we attain that place
to which we are drawn;
Thine be the care, Lord,
so that the stars propitiously
conjoin above us."
AFTER NATURE, W. G. Sebald
kudzu catacombs
(as seen while driving 70 mph down the highway)
"In 1947, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists established its famous Doomsday Clock, estimating how far we are from midnight: termination. (...) In January, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the hand was moved to two minutes {100 seconds*} to midnight, the closest to terminal disaster since 1953. By this time analysts were considering not only the rising threat of nuclear war but also the firm dedication of the Republican organization to accelerate the race to environmental catastrophe."
Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union, George Yancy and Noam Chomsky from the New York Times
*time shortened on 23 January, 2020
Welcome (sit a spell) Come In
stairway to
"The modern Prometheus and the modern Icarus, Franklin and the Wright Brothers who invented the aeroplane, are those fateful destroyers of our sense of distance who threaten to lead the world back into chaos. Telegraph and telephone are destroying the cosmos. But myths and symbols; in attempting to establish spiritual bonds between man and the outside world create space for devotion and scope for reason which are destroyed by the instantaneous electrical contact—unless a disciplined humanity re-introduce the impediment of conscience."
A lecture on Serpent Ritual, Aby M. Warburg