bLOGOS/HA HA: WOT YOU DO

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

25 March 2015

WOT YOU DO

A Man Held review: Christian Capurro's mobile phone images at Centre for Contemporary Photography

Above is the online headline of the review of you

by Robert Nelson in The Age today.

The opening paragraph :

If I show you a picture in a book, you look into the image and ignore my thumbs. Your brain tells you to enter the world in the picture and disregard my random jitters. Unconsciously, you experience a desire to hold the book yourself, so that your own body-vibrations are normalised.

The closing paragraph :

Shot on your posh digital camera, you wouldn't think twice about the images: they'd just stay on your hard disk as a record for a chance to boast that you'd captured such beauty. But like Capurro, Koller holds something fragile in his hands, trembling with uncertainty, unfixed, transient, evanescent with that hazy improbability that aesthetic experience shares with life itself.