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2006

"Parmi les lettrés, ceux-là surtout sont oppressés par la bile noire,
qui, s'appliquant avec zèle à l'étude de la philosophie, détachent leur pensée
du corps et des choses corporelles, pour l'unir aux incorporelles."
Marsile Ficin, De Vita Triplici (1433-1499)

My cold fingers, on the day of the winter solstice, going through the rime iced trees of the foothills of Mount Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Sweden.

Saturnalia, the ancient Roman orgiastic seven-day festival of Saturn used to begin on December 17, before the daylight of Sol Invictus "the unconquered sun" begins to increase. Furthermore, in the medieval theory of the Four Humors, the elk is the animal symbolizing melancholia, and dawn is its time of the day.
Lappish winter days are but an aurora, a slow daybreak of several hours.
Mixing ink with vodka, so that it would not freeze while still on the brush, I transcribed -- in the mimetic Asian learning tradition -- the handwriting of Dong Chi-Tsun �� �� �� (1555-1636, Tookishoo in Japanese), a Chinese calligrapher and painter who's work was greatly favored by emperors and scholars of the Ming and Ching Dynasties.

"Ut pictura poesis" (as is painting so is poetry - Ars Poetica), wrote Horace, meaning that poetry (in its broadest sense, "imaginative texts") merited the same careful interpretation that was, in his day, reserved for painting. He was possibly borrowing from Plutarch's De Gloria Atheniensium, a well known motto attributed to Simonides of Ceos: "Poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens" (poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry).
I come to think of Ezra Pound's Ideogrammic Method, supposed to allow poetry to deal with abstract content through concrete images (a key idea in the development of Imagism). In The ABC of Reading he explains his understanding of the way Chinese characters were formed, with the example of the character for "sunrise" and "East" being essentially a superposition of the characters for "tree" and "sun"; that is, a picture of the sun tangled in a tree's branches.

What I saw: black and white, the atramentous liquid coagulating in the snow flakes; semisolid transformation bound to an inevitable spring. Ink as black bile, atrabile, the alkaline sweat of darkness.

"Origin here means that from and by which something is what it is and as it is. What something is, as it is,
we call its essence or nature. The origin of something is the source of its nature. The question concerning the
origin of the work of art asks about the source of its nature. On the usual view, the work arises out of and by
means of the activity of the artist. But by what and whence is the artist what he is? By the work; for to say that
the work does credit to the master means that it is the work that first lets the artist emerge as a master of his art.
The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other. Nevertheless,
neither is the sole support of the other. In themselves and in their interrelations artist and work are each of them
by virtue of a third thing which is prior to both, namely that which also gives artist and work of art their names -- art."
Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art", in Basic Writings, Harper, San Francisco, 1977, page 149.


A before the alphabet: as if reaching that Annamese origin.
In Asian calligraphy, if one abundantly inks the brush before writing a character, all of the drawn lines will combine into a single form. While appearing indecipherable, it remains "readable" to the initiate who is able to identify the character embedded in its apparent shapelessness.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

1.- Work presentation followed by a lecture on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice:
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam still practices heavy censorship when it comes to free expression and contemporary art in particular. Art students must go through a five-year program consisting exclusively of life model drawing classes and figurative socialist-realist painting and sculpture, without a chance to experiment with anything else, even if they are willing. Any modern or contemporary influence is banned and engaging such practice in public space is strictly controlled, if not simply forbiden. Expermintal and contemporary artists are blacklisted.

The proposed lecture, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, Worm autodafé intervention / Okinawa-2005, ...), attempted to offer new perspectives on the use of non-institutional public spaces for contemporary art practice, ranging from tactical outdoor interventions to the internet.

Talk invited by Vietnamese curator Nguyen Minh Thanh and gallerist Nguyen Minh Phuoc. Special thanks to curator and artist Tran Luong. Supported by ArtsNetworkAsia.

2.- Nickels, paper bullets, falling leaves, and bullshit bombs. These are some of the nicknames given to war propaganda delivered by air in the form of printed flyers.
During the last years of the Vietnam War (that the Vietnamese call the American War), millions of counterfeit North Vietnam paper money was dropped from American bombers, one side of the bill looked real, the reverse side was a propaganda letter to the commies telling them they were going down, and telling the public that there government was wasting their lives on a war they could not win. Here is an example of this paper money bought from a bomb handler in Guam, stationed in the US Air Force in 1972.

The circulation of bank notes in any city, moving from hand to hand, can be seen as a diffuse network of invisible, genuine and fast moving message boards in the public space.

The intervention, entitled "Bill Boards", consists in recycling war propaganda techniques for poetic and artistic purposes. It hereby consisted in the transcription in different languages of short poems, thoughts and daily reflections on banknotes, before using them to buy noodles and beer at many different bustling sidewalk street stalls and bars in central Hanoi's Hoan Kiem district, where, as you read these lines, they must still be in circulation to buy raw beef noodle soup, dog meat or vegetables.

The work echoes a similar intervention proposed in Alexandria in 2005, click here for a description.

"Where it speaks, it joys, and it knows nothing."
Jacques Lacan, Encore, Éd du Seuil, Paris, 1975, page 133.


As a poet of my kingdom puts it: "Il y a une géographie des corps de l'Empire céleste, qu'il est loisible d'observer. (...) Le poil Chinois est rare. Comme objectif, comme désir, comme soucis, il n'existe pas (...) avoir touché et vu ce corps lui fait dire quelquefois qu'il est propre, et que le nôtre est sale (...). On descend ainsi vers le Sud, traversant de grands espaces vierges, désertiques, et l'on s'arrête devant la Porte Céleste de sa Cité parfois interdite. Plus bas, latéralement, aucune végétation ne borde l'anfractuosité. Je me livre entièrement à cette géométrie (...).
Pas de balottement des membres (des bras, des cuisses, des seins), pas de ces affaissements des tissus (la gorge, le ventre, la poitrine, les joues), et pas de renfoncements ou de plis de la chair qui provoquent et retiennent la sudation : dessous la peau, on croirait qu'il n'y a rien. (...) Elle a les hanches étroites, le sein haut perché (citron, noix, poire, cerise)." Jean-Pierre Outers, Les corps célestes, in La tête ailleurs (années Chinoises), Éd. Talus d'approche, Bruxelles, 1995, page 103.

In Asian calligraphy, if one abundantly inks the brush before writing a character, all of the drawn lines will combine into a single form. While appearing indecipherable, it remains "readable" to the initiate who is able to identify the character embedded in its apparent shapelessness.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

"Documentaries, like theatre pieces, novels or poems are forms of fiction."
Frederick Wiseman, in Chronicler of the Western World, Zipporah Films site originally published in La Sept Arte.


The name of this community intervention is WA(��), a Chinese character existing both in Japan and China and meaning simultaneously "to divide"/"to separate" and "to understand"/"to realize". The attempt is to address the tense situation that currently exists between the two countries by working with highly localized agrarian communities in each. Its aim and its modus operandi are based on the short-cutting of political and media spheres in order for an individual poetry to occur -human shards, or something of that sort. I know the approach of Claude Lanzmann, Jean Rouch or Chris Marker: we shall see.

The first phase of the project took place in northern Yunnan Province, China, which was chosen because of its relative isolation from mainstream media and Manchuria.
It consisted of interviewing a farmer, Mr. He, asking him what he thought of Japan and inviting him to speak frankly. Though (self)censorship is still a cruel reality in The People's Republic, I nevertheless tried to reach Mr. He's private thoughts on the subject, thinking that his frank but humanistic opinions might reflect those of a wider community, and perhaps even influence it. Chinese propaganda, Japanese silence: jumping over a generation, the interview continued with his two grandsons, in order to reflect on the heritage of Chinese schooling on the question.

Note: The initial attempt was to conduct interviews with a substantial number of farmers, both men and women. The most insightful statements gathered during those numerous auditions would have been subsequently translated into Japanese and painted in big colorful letters on the outside walls of farmhouses by a local advertising company (a very usual, and beautiful, way to advertise opinions in China, along with state propaganda). The aim of the wall paintings was cathartic: they were intended to invite discussions to take place by "publicizing" them, as if to disseminate (in Japanese and therefore in a private manner) to any Japanese tourists that might happen to pass by the insightful domestic, and unofficial, viewpoint of remote Chinese populations on a media issue of great importance to both their countries. The intervention envisioned the tourist as its audience.
It has not been possible to complete the intervention (yet?) as a result of the farmer's last minute withdrawal, fearing the reaction of the local government.

Phase 2: The next step is to bring Mr. He's statements to Japan, and interview Japanese farmers in the countryside of Kansai about their thoughts concerning China. Their opinions will be published by some means in the public realm, in Chinese for visiting tourists.
For an interesting blog on the Japan-China issue, visit http://www.china-japan-reconciliation.blogspot.com/

Keaton. Portrait d'un corps comique:
"(...)Pair d'un Charlie Chaplin ou d'un Harold Lloyd, ses traits à
la fois éloquents et immuables (on l'appelait "Tête de marbre" et
"l'Homme qui ne rit jamais") s'inscrivaient dans un corps
acrobatique et gracieux, doté d'un esprit géométrique. Le présent
essai biographique se propose de rendre hommage à ce grand artiste,
dont le cinéma réunit comique et beauté."
Peter Kravanja, Brussels, 2006.

Modeled after the riddle of Leon Battista Albertisi, as Bergson believed, insensitivity normally accompanies laughter, and comedy is the result of the mechanical gilded over the living. The need for humor in a society would then be little more than a reaction to the menace with which the mechanical burdens the living. We need humor and humorists in societies dominated by the mechanical as we need philosophers and tragic poets in societies where life is intact. Thus, without a doubt, we are unable to draw a biography of a comic body without an autopsy of the pornographic body. If we have known since Pliny and Quintilian that the origin of painting was the circumscription of the shadow of the body of the lover departing for war "then what would have happened if painters had not had the courage of progress?"
Auguste Penjon thinks of the zygomatic act as the interruption of liberty in automatisms... this series tempts the proximity.

The drawings presented in this work are called "sketches karautsushi," a Japanese term (��ʂ�) that suggests the act of pressing the shutter button of a camera without taking a picture, because no film has been loaded, or to advance the film (without framing). They were made by circumscription and superimposition, the latter procedure sometimes used cinematographically to "bring out time's flux." Circumscription, a technique in which Parrhasius excelled, as we learn from Xenephon in conversation with Socrates, consists of tracing the circuits of contours.
The drawings were made by placing a sheet of paper over a computer screen and then tracing images found by an Internet search engine. It is a method that refers a posteriori to a tradition reaching back to the Renaissance, when the monocular perspective first developed by Leon Battista Alberti was being refined.

ISBN 88-89421-15-0 (fr), Ed. Portaparole (Roma) info@portaparole.it

Invited to "display modern approaches" in this Biennial of classical Arabic calligraphy, I decided to propose the Metragram series for exhibition. Aware of the conservative view of the Islamic Emirate of Sharjah, I was surprised when I received a positive answer.

But on opening day, when I entered the museum after Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammad al-Qassimi, ruler of the sheikhdom, I was unable to find my work... as it turn out, it had been removed at the last moment. The reason was, off course, obvious: in one of the work I am inking the womb of my mother, while the whole series brings together calligraphy (the most holy art of the Islamic world with architecture) and the female body (the most taboo architecture of that same world...).

In response, I then decided to show those works during a second opening in my hotel room. There, I received the feedback I expected from such Arab artists as calligrapher Nja Mahdaoui from Tunis, painter Abdallah el-Hariri from Casablanca, Dr. Abdel Aziz Alloun from Damascus, Ahmed Mater al-Ziad from Saudi Arabia or Abbas Al Bagdadi, former calligrapher to Saddam Hussein.

Participation curated by Talal Moualla and Hisham Al Mahdloum.

"Forget gold souqs, oil wells and cargo-laden wooden dhows:
nothing symbolises modern-day Dubai quite as well as the shopping mall (...)"
Lonely Planet, Arabian Peninsula, Lonely Planet Ed., 2004, page 312.

Work presentation followed by a lecture on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.
A city on fast-forward, Dubai's development pace is frenetic, and despite being smaller, faster than Shanghai from my own perspective. But maybe more important is the fact that despite it is growing at an astounding rate the city remain built on an Arabic tribal system, and not only onto the dunes of the Trucial coast but also into the quicksands of luxury.
The immigrant indian communities that work in the suburbs of the touristic eden remind me of Fritz Lang' Metropolis (1926) or Arthur C. Clarke's classic novel The City and the Stars (1956). The Arab Emirates false utopia is similar to this proposed by H.G. Wells in The Time Machine where a future humanity, the Eloi, live a life of leisure in which their needs are provided for them, in what appears to be a park-like pastoral paradise (Dubai). They are exploited by the Morlocks, mutants that live in a chthonic underground (Sharjah).

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Lecture invited by Mohammed Kazem, Ebtisam Abdul Aziz and Hassan Sharif.

Series of workshops with the art students of Shahed university, an establishment founded shortly after the Islamic revolution whose mission was to teach martyr's children.
The ateliers and academic teachings I found in the art department of that university reminded me of those I've met in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, or in China's People Republic: Sketche classes while gazing at a Michelangelo's David in plaster.
The worshops aimed at broaden the students' working methodologies and artistic entrepreneurship by crossing different limits, starting with the medium.

"Invaders": Installation using these construction blocs that can be found everywhere in modern day landscapes (including Iran), between ruin and building material. It consisted in arranging those inform amassments of building materials into these tetris-like Atari archaic arcade video gaming life-forms known as Space Invaders.

The work gradually invaded the landscape of this Iranian countryside at a time of possible US sanction following their national nuclear program, appearing above farmers' houses on hills slopes and summits: countryside graffiti of a sort.

Assistants for the installation: Mitham Barza, Mahmood Maktabi, Banafsheh Khas, Atefeh Khas, Zahea Shafi'abadi, Raheleh Zomorodinia, Taherh Godarzi, and Mohamad Shaf'abadi.

This poem, Sharh Golshan Raz' (explanation of the garden of mystery), by Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

Estgah Shekam is a series of streets in Tehran that local have come to name "Stomac station" for the many food stalls and markets present in the area.

Sort of succinct graffiti, the installation is a poetic and cathartic work of vulgarization consisting in the traversing of the public space with a single sentence of automatic writing. Abreaction, the intervention invite an exteriorisation of emotional tension, possible effect according to Aristotle of tragedy on the audience (Poetics, VI and VIII).

Performance documented by Spanish filmmaker Alba Sotorra Clua.

Work presentation followed by a lecture on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show, in the political frame of the country at the time, how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Dr. Ahmad Nadalian.

"On the nature of mountains, it says in revelation, that, at first, the mountains have grown forth in
eighteen years; and Alburz ever grew till the completion of eight hundred years; two hundred years up
to the star station, two hundred years up to the moon station, two hundred years up to the sun station,
and two hundred years to the endless light. The other mountains have grown out of Alburz, in number 2244 (...)"
Firdowsi, Shahnameh (Book of Kings), XII, I-2.


"The creation of concrete forms, in which one can come to contemplate the Divine, is the very reason for the existence of Art. The material in the form created by the artist, and the creative process itself, are aspects of the feminine principle. The maker must play two roles: as a passive recipient to the idea which is conceived and an active agent towards that which is to be born." Laleh Bakhtiar, Sufi, the Gathering the Opposites, Thames and Hudson Press, UK, 1976.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

Work presentation followed by a lecture on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Roger McDonald and Jennifer Teo.

"I am reminded of the work of Iwai Shigeaki for Ginburart (1993), organised by
Masato Nakamura. Iwai used coin lockers in Ginza subway station to place small sound
works which one could listen to by pressing one's ear up against the locker doors. (...)"
Roger McDonald on tactical museum, April 27, 2006.


Off the record is a punctual underground underway art show that takes place at various venues and subway stations in Tokyo. It hijacks the recently installed X-CUBE^© locker system. Those lockers allow multiple users to exchange packages by using a touch screen and their cell phone numbers as digital-keys. The tactically curated Off the record exhibit simply substitutes the package with an artwork or installation.
Existing entirely in transitional public spaces, the show nevertheless remains hidden and visible solely within a private network: a person who has gained access to the work can only invite someone else to view it whose cell phone number they already have.

A chain reaction guest list:
The curator or the artist places the artwork, then invites the first person to the show by registering his cell phone number with the X-CUBE^©, and calling him to confirm. In the following hours, the invited viewer arrives at the station, uses his cell phone to unlock the gallery space (the locker), and pays ¥100 to view the work. He then invites the next person by registering a new cell phone number and calling to confirm, and so on...
Think of a "Chinese whisper," a children's game in which a sentence is passed on from one player to the next, often with its meaning altered in transit.
Want to see a work? You need to find someone who's invited, and get him to invite you or go with him together to see it. There is no other way. This is a mean hi-tech mega-city: if you're rich, pop-up when you want...but if you're poor, be fast! It costs ¥100 every 3 hours.

Invited curators included Simon Njami(Africa Remix), Jay Brown(Lijiang Studio), Michel Assenmaker, Kobata Kazue, Nathalie Angles(Location One) and Tran Luong.
For the website of the project, click here

Work presentation followed by a lecture on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Richard Thomas and Terri Bird / CLUBSprojects Inc.

Work presentation followed by discussions on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Jan Van Woensel.

Work presentation followed by discussions on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Maarten Vanden Eynde and Marjolijn Dijkman.

"Qu'est-ce là qui monte du désert,
comme une colonne de fumée,
vapeur de myrrhe et d'encens,
et de tous parfums exotiques?"
La Bible de Jérusalem, Le Cantiques des Cantiques (Song of Solomon), Third song, III-6.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

"Il faut surtout pardonner à ces âmes malheureuses qui ont élu
de faire le pèlerinage à pied, qui côtoient le rivage et regardent sans comprendre
l'horreur de la lutte, la joie de vaincre ni le profond désespoir des vaincus".
Joseph Conrad, letter to Marguerite Poradowska, 23rd-25th March, 1890.

"(...)To him it seems a miracle that we should last so much as a single day. There is no antidote, he writes, against the opium of time. The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us. Hour upon hour is added to the sum. Time itself grows old. Pyramids, arches and obelisks are melting pillars of snow. Not even those who have found a place amidst the heavenly constellations have perpetuated their names: Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog Star. Indeed, old families last not three oaks. To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness fall upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish is to be forgotten". Winfried Georg Sebald, The Rings of Saturn: an English pilgrimage, New Directions Books, UK, 1944, page 24.

July 2006, I am in Israel for an art residency themed "social responsibility". Little did I know how significant this subject would become, as the ruination of Lebanon would soon start, wrecking what had just been rebuilt. "The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass" as one of Adorno's aphorisms reads in his Minima Moralia. Is the Judeo-Christian-Enlightenment vision of redemption the only valid viewpoint with which to engage a deeply troubled world?
Gathering thoughts, the intervention consisted of a morning walk towards the Machtesh Ramon to voice a Soliloquy (monologue in drama) towards the only stable thing there seemed to be in this absurd biblical place, the sole perennial audience, the last echo to humanity's madness: the Crater, vast atrium of decay.

The content of this soliloquy was an open letter to Joseph Badtke-Berkow, it can be found here.

Residency curated by Raffram Chaddad.

"She bore a hard womb, a difficult bellyful
seven hundred years, nine ages of man;
but no birth was born, no creature was created.
The lass rolled as the water-mother: she swims east, swims west
swims north-west and south, swims all the skylines
in fiery birth-pangs, in hard belly-woes;
but no birth was born, no creature was created."
Elias Lönnrot, Chapter 1: In the beginning, The Kalevala, Oxford Univ. press, UK, 1989, page 5.

"In the Eastern Finnish regions, family traditions were passed on via the womenfolk, and women dealt with the significant rituals of life from birth to death". Jaana Juvonen, Haravainen: Images of Karelia, Joensuun yliopistopaino, Finland, page 56.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

Pyötikön tsasouna has been an Old Believer chapel since 1800. A convent could be found here from 1847 to 1890. Abandoned after the Old Believer were persecuted the area, it was sacralized to Greek-Orthodox faith in 1960.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

"That's the origin of beer, a good drink for the well-bred:
it put smiles on women's lips, men in good spirits
the well-bred making merry but the mad leaping about."
Elias Lönnrot, Chapter 20: Slaughtering & Brewing, The Kalevala, Oxford Univ. press, UK, 1989, page 263.


"Of what use are we singers, what good we cuckoo-callers
if no fire spurts from our mouths, no brand from beneath our tongues
and no smoke after our words"
Unknown Ingrian bard performing in 1858.

Karelianism originated from Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala Epic and the poetic aura of Karelia: a conflictuous border-region between Sweden and Russia for hundreds of years. It was a romantic phenomenon of ideology and style that emerged towards the end of the 19th century, and is often considered the origin of German romanticism. A literary pilgrimage took place here, and "Karelianists" soon flowed the regions resulting in the national independence of Finland.

Like Axel Gallén and Louis Sparre in 1890 and rune-singers before them, I walked forestry paths from Akka-Koli to Mäkrä, crossing meadows of turnips and rye, slopes of birch trees and raspberries. But if Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Eero Järnefelt, Emil Wikström and their contemporaries, inspired by French realism, came here to find the essence of Finnish identity, I myself pilgrimaged here as a foreigner for the precise opposite reason: to foster the oneness of the world. To the racial mysticism their sought in this roadless wilderness I opposed my apatrid diasporism, and to their nationalistically minded romanticism my internationally birthed lyricism. Where they tried to "rid themselves of foreign influences" and "delve in their own roots", I came with scattered roots to embrace their otherness as my own, reading the Kalevala of Elias Lönnrot just as I did with the Shahnameh of Firdowsi or the Ramayana of Valmiki.

Here I tried, toe unsuccessfully, to leave for the numerous ants of the forest to digest, honey-painted sentences describing how Aino, the luckless lass, drowned herself, and in the deep woods installed into spider webs words describing Väinämöinen playing his Kantele -- an allusion to Roland Barthes (cf. Mythologies, 1957). But as I reached towards the final chapters of the Karelian epic, when death's daughter get wetted by a great gust of wind till her womb swelled with children in a barren glade, and she must unload her belly in a swamp, a marshy sauna full of smoke, bringing forth nine sons in one summer night, I finally decided to give lake Pielinen some message-in-a-bottle for the salvation of myself.

On a table laid with the wonders of nature, six bottles of dark ale did I drink before filling them with my words: one brown beer from Tartu in Estonia, one bohemian black lager from the Czech Republic, a Finnish blond one with a raven on its lid and one with a goat too, one with thick foam from Lithuania and then one from Poland brewed in Brzesko. Among these uninteresting messages left for water to swallow, for fishes to chew or fishermen to laugh, one I wrote to a departing lover can be read here.

Residency curated by Tiina Hallakorpi and Mari Niiranen for the Art Council of North Karelia.

Introduction of recent works (i.e. "Abreaction" / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" / Senegal-2005, "Off the record" / Tokyo-2006, ...) aiming at promoting the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions revolving around ideas of apatridity and diasporism.

Some of the questions raised by the talk/works could had been, among others: Is it that the potentate of contemporary art is Western? Is there a colonialist dimension in its logos? Would it be relevant to question the capitalism inherent to its working methodologies and what would be the consequences? Following globalization, must western art redefine its discourse in order to rejoin what I call "the audiences of the borders"; if yes, how?

Participation commissioned by T. Melih Görgün, Beral Madra and Vittorio Urbani.
Participation funded by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey.

"Nativity is the general time and place of a person's birth and early years. The term has evolved a strong association, at least in Western civilization through the influences of Christianity, to the nativity of Jesus, which Christians refer to simply as The Nativity.
The term can also apply to cultural appropriation to identify the specific and general situation, as in Native land, language, political system and environment, of a person. In this sense, a person's nativity is construed (or misconstrued) to form a basis for a general impression based on national origin or ethnicity". Wikipedia.org, excerpt from the article on Nativity.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

Work presentation followed by discussions on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as apatridity or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Jaakko Rustanius (HIAP) and Oliver Whitehead.

Quote from the curators: "This exhibition takes as its point of departure a question first posed by Walter Benjamin. --What form do you suppose a life would take--, Benjamin conjectured, --that was determined at a decisive moment precisely by the street song last on everybody's lips?-- Operating at intersections between photomedia, performance, video and installation, the Australian and international artists in What Form Would A Life Take? utilise public spaces, outmoded objects, personal encounters, generosity, exchange and forgotten corners of the city from Berlin to Shanghai to Adelaide.
Through language and confrontations with language, What Form Would A Life Take? explores the modes through which artists articulate moments in everyday life spatially, and questions the value placed on life in late capitalist society".

Artists: Robin Hungerford, Paul Greedy, Eoghan McTigue, Heike Bollig, Sarah Goffman, Peter McKay, Eric Van Hove.

Curated by Maria Cruz and Reuben Keehan (Artspace).

"Le néophyte doit "mourir" à l'état profane et retourner, symboliquement, à l'état embryonnaire avant de "renaître" à l'état spirituel supérieur. Les rites de mort initiatique sont variés mais tous visent à opérer un regressus ad uterum ; il s'agit de régression, non d'ordre physiologique, naturellement, mais d'ordre cosmologique. Les formes, multiples, de ces rites utilisent tous, d'une façon ou d'une autre, le symbole du ventre, du ventre maternel, non de la mère humaine, mais de la Mère cosmique, la Magna Mater (...). Parfois, c'est le passage par le ventre d'un monstre engloutisseur - un "mannequin" - entrée qui figure un ensevelissement comme le baptême. Dans tous les cas, donc, il s'agit pour le candidat d'un "retour à la mère", c'est-à-dire à la divinité initiatrice, censée faire mourir l'individu avant de le faire revivre". Jean Hani, La Vierge Noire et le mystère marial, Éd. Guy trédaniel, Paris, 1995, page 35.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

I met this young Israeli soldier in the bus to Be'er Sheeva. When I asked her if she would agree to let me ink her womb on the Mount of Olives, she answered simply "I don't mind".
And so a month later, as I was inking her belly behind the Church of All Nations, she spontaniously and not without a certain melancholy gazed ahead towards the remains of the Temple that stretches downward, a strange expression on her face.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

"The Palestinian woman is a shadow: she is always someone's daughter,
someone'wife, or someone's sister. (...) And if she has an israeli passport,
while being a Palestinian, she will neither be Israeli nor Palestinian".
Hannan Abu Hussein & Haim Hodri, excrept form the video Woman between two moustaches and two men, 2005.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

"I, too, sometimes crossed the frozen river on those arctic nights. The pathway was silent underfoot. It was like moving through the void. I reflected that only yesterday we were nothing. Nothing: like the nameless men of the forgotten village which had vanished from these banks. Between that yesterday and the present, centuries seemed to have passed, or between the times of those men and our own. Only yesterday countless lights were burning along these banks inside rooms where the power, the wealth, and the pleasure of others reigned. We put out those lights, brought back primordial night. That night is our work. That night is us. We have entered it in order to destroy it. So many harsh, terrible tasks must be done; tasks which demand the disappearance of their performers. Let those who come after us forget us. Let them be different from us. Thus what is best in us will be reborn in them". Victor Serge, Conquered City, Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, London, 1978, page 27.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.

Named after one of Bertold Brecht dictum, the intervention consisted in a four hours prose improvisation following the reading of Alexander Kluge's retrospective literary record of the air raid of April 8th 1945 on Halberstadt, Germany (Der Luftangriff auf Halberstadt am 8, April 1945, in Neue Geschichten, Hefte 1-18, Unheimlichkeit der Zeit, Frankfurt, 1977). It was installed counter-clockwise, on the first runabout one finds when entrering the city.

The earlier written lines of text would be gradually erazed by the revolving cars as the transcription was underway, giving a fading effect from the center as time was passing. Similarilly, Kluge's account of what happened follows not what he saw himself -he was thirteen at the time- but events peripheral to his own existence past and present. "The aim of the text as a whole, as we shall see, depends on the fact that experience in any real sense was actually impossible in view of the overwhelming speed and totality of the destruction (...)" Winfried G. Sebald, Between history and natural history, on the literary description of total destruction, in Campo Santo, New-York, 2006, page 86.

Work presentation followed by discussions on the possible use of public space for contemporary art practice.

The proposed talk, starting from concrete exemples (i.e. "Abreaction" intervention / Shanghai-2004, "A nos morts" intervention / Senegal-2005, or "Off the record" curating project / Tokyo-2006...) attempted to show how the use of the "broader public space" -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as statelessness or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today.

Talk invited by Reem Fadda and Khaled Hourani.

Direct descendant of Kuuchinkoro (1816-1876), famous Ainu personality during the Meiji era, Mai Hachiya, grand-grand-daughter of Hawtomtey (left on the picture), is an Ainu of Kamikawa, now Asahikawa.
In the traditionally animist Ainu culture the most important Kamuy (spirit/god) is "Grand-mother Hearth", whose altar in the house is the firepit. A symbol and representation of the kamuy's power is the Inau: a whittled twig with clusters of shavings still attached and decoratively curled. In this picture can be seen the Inau of Kamuy-fuchi (fuchi for fire). source: M. Inez Hilger, Together with the Ainu: a vanishing people, Univ. Oklahoma Press, USA, 1971 // Mrs. J. F. Bishop, Unbeaten tracks of Japan, Georges Neurnes Ed., London, 1900, p325.

Hokkaido Ainus, now numbering several thousands, are a fast disappearing population following the desire for homogeneity and the long lasting assimilation policies of the Japanese government who still refuse to recognize this people as an ethnic minority.

The ideal of blackness is, as Adorno remarked in his Ästhetische Theorie, one of the deepest impulse of abstraction. "(...) reaching a place where no star, no light is visible, where there is nothing, where nothing is forgotten because nothing is remembered, where it is night, where it is nothing, nothing, void", says the narrator of Wolfgang Hildesheimer's novel, Tynset while exploring the spaces between the stars with his telescope. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Tynset, Frankfort, 1965, page 186.

Thus this calligraphic intervention related to the Anthropometries of Yves Klein, the Logograms of Christian Dotremont and the Dactylograms of Piero Manzoni, which I have labeled a Metragram (or Matrigraphy) and that consists of inscribing on the hypogastrium (womb) of a woman with monochromic black ink -- tabula rasa, pinakis agraphos. Amphigory reflecting on the paradox of writing, a Metragram tends to "write" a particular geographical and ethnological area through a symbolic inking of the origin of that world.

For a glimpse at other images from the Metragram series, visit this webpage.