Completed Painting: 'Tourist View 1'

 

'Tourist View 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage & on Panel, 400 mm x 800 mm, 2023

• Two views across two rivers - separate in space and time.

• Two view_points, in two individual square metres - located on two different screens. 

• Two re_invented territories. 

• Two visitor destinations [re_viewed].

[Translation]:

Beautiful day and night. Make sure you get there early and get your vstupenky (also available from Get Your Guide for the same price as the castle) and you will be in St. Wein by 9am. A beautiful cathedral and worth a stroll from the outside, the interior and exterior is quite remarkable. The other areas are nice too and add context to the countries and their various functions. Take the tram to the north entrance, this explains the many stairs and the uphill. There are a number of pay toilets and a small poorly advertised shop. ATTENTION: you often have to take tram 22 to get there. This tram caters to English speaking visitors who have paid for tram tickets but don't read the fine print on the back which requires confirmation to avoid fines (but the istegstadia isn't shown in yellow boxes on the walls of the tram). If you're lucky, the subway cops will take advantage of novice status and fine you about $80 per person in your group, show you the credit card machine, and threaten to ru the Policii Pass if you propose umírá. It looks a bit like targeting, profiling or snooping. If we were law breakers we would NOT have a ticket marked with the interval it IS valid for, date and timed instead of a PAID Vstupenky. It was a quick reminder of a visit to the castle and certainly contributed to the fact that no more money was spent on jewelry that day. The government appears to need more cash than the local economy struggling to recover from Covid. Shame on the subway police, and intimidation and little empowerment is a step too far. A great castle and cathedral, a bit corrupted by government greed.

[Translation]:

Excellent location, it's in a refurbished part of town opposite a fabulous John Lewis store. The rooms are also excellent, large TV, good air conditioning, comfortable beds, safe, drinks cooler and the usual little things you would expect, no noise from other rooms the night we stayed, cleanliness cannot be faulted, the two smaller sinks is a special design, the kettle doesn't fill, the battery is so low by the sink, the kettle is level, you have to fill it with mugs, and there is a tall cylindrical light in the main room, next to it is a window with a hidden LED bulb, really bright light, much better than the normal dim light in the room you usually have in hotels, but the only way to turn it off is to kneel down and connect the floor to the horizontal socket between the beds. The shelf and the lamp itself have never had a light without a switch in hotel seen. Not clear if there is another way to turn it off as I explained.

My only complaint is that this hotel reception is small and only a few metres from the front door, which means that if there is a very small queen and the receptionist (male) spoke in a whisper and had to ask him about any guests I can pick up, he repeated that the other (male) younger man at the front desk looked like he just got a new one, his house was taken away, there was no good reception from this new body, otherwise everything was fine.

Completed Painting: 'Das Schloss 1 [vouch.speared.hooked.]

 

'Das Schloss 1 (vouch.speared.hooked)', Acrylics, Paper Collage & Paint Pen on Panel,
600 mm x 600 mm, 2022

Here's the completed version of one of the in-progress pieces teased here back in July. It's fair to say that progress was a little stilted over the summer period for various reasons, but work continues at whatever pace it can. Having several pieces simultaneously in play, and allowing numerous layered narratives to accumulate organically through possibly extended periods of reflection, actually feel like not altogether regrettable parts of the process right now.

I think I am moderately pleased with the way this one seems to tug at several possible threads of an increasingly tangled rhizome, whilst establishing a degree of stratified formal 'coherence' at the same time. Any attempt to provide a simplistic explanation feels harder than ever at this point, but maybe that's no bad thing either.

Perhaps the following quotations can supply some tentative clues instead...

"K. began to take notice. So the castle had appointed him land surveyor. On the one hand this was to his disadvantage, since it showed they knew all they needed to know about him up at the castle, had weighed up the balance of forces, and were entering the fray with a smile. But on the other hand it was also to his advantage, because it showed, he felt, that they underestimated him and that he was going to have more freedom than he might have hoped for at the outset. And if they thought that with his intellectually no doubt superior recognition of his land surveyorship they could keep him in a perfect state of fright, then they were wrong, it sent a little shiver down his spine, that was all." [1.]

"If I had not been so determined to set seriously to work, I might have made an effort to start at once. But given that my resolve was unbreakable, given that within twenty-four hours, inside the empty frame of tomorrow where everything fitted so perfectly because it was not today, my best intentions would easily take material shape, it was really preferable not to think of beginning things on an evening when I was not quite ready - and of course the following days were to be no better suited to beginning things.

Unfortunately, tomorrow turned out not to be that broad, bright, outward-looking day that I had feverishly looked forward to. When it ended, my idleness and hard struggle against my inner obstacles had just lasted for another twenty-four hours. After a few days, when my projects had still not come to anything, when some of my hope that they would come to something had faded, and with some of it some of the courage I required in order to subordinate everything to my coming achievement, I went back to staying up late, as I now lacked my incentive (the certain knowledge that the great work would be begun by the following morning) to go to bed early on any given evening." [2.]

"There are natures purely contemplative, completely unsuited for action, who nevertheless, under mysterious unknown impulses, act sometimes with a rapidity of which they would suppose themselves incapable.

"Those for instance who, afraid their concierge may have bad news for them, pace an hour timorously before daring to go in; those who hold letters for two weeks before opening them, or wait six months to take some step that has been immediately necessary for a year already - but sometimes abruptly feel precipitated into action by an irresistible force, like an arrow leaving the bow. Moralists and doctors, who claim to know everything, fail to explain from whence so sudden a mad energy comes to these lazy, voluptuous souls and why, incapable of the simplest and most necessary things, they find at certain moments a spurt of first class courage to execute the most absurd and even most dangerous actions." [3.]

[1.]: Franz Kafka, 'The Castle' (Trans. J. Underwood), London, Penguin, 1997/1926

[2.]: Marcel Proust, 'In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2: In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower' (Trans. James Grieve), London, Penguin, 2002/1919

[3.]: Charles Baudelaire, 'The Bad Glazier' (Trans. Keith Waldrop), From 'Paris Spleen', Middletown, CT, Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2009/1869.

Completed Painting: 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 1'

 

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 1', Paper Collage & Acrylics on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2022

• Travels in time
• The mediated map (The screen)
• The view across two rivers
• The Bohemian memory
• The buried text
• Additional information (Search filters)
• New developments
• The constructed edifice
• The Land Surveyor (K.)
• The bridge adjacent
• The tower
• Notel
• Entry prohibited
• An inversion
• Blue overall (Marcel)
• The tourist guide
• The precise execution

Kafkaesque Diversion 1.1: 'The Castle' (trans_late)

 

All Images: August-September 2021

"K began to take notice.  So the castle had appointed him land surveyor.  On the one hand this was to his  disadvantage, since it showed they knew all they needed to know about him up at the castle, had weighed up the balance of forces, and were entering the fray with a smile.  But on the other hand it was also to his advantage, because it showed, he felt, that they underestimated him and that he was going to have more freedom than he might have hoped for at the outset.  And if they thought that with this intellectually no doubt superior recognition of his land surveyorship they could keep him in a permanent state of fright, then they were wrong, it sent a little shiver down his spine, that was all." [1.]

"K is started.  Also Hatte is the castle for landowners.  It is therefore necessary to show that, on the basis of the castle, all over the past, the authorities shall be required to do so and so be reckoned with a dish on the grass.  However, on the other side, there is also a section of this, which is important, as it is underestimated and has more freedom, but it has also been improved.  Back to the beginning, to the end with intelligent integration for more than half the time our company will be able to decide whether to happen or what will happen."

[1.]:  Franz Kafka, 'The Castle', (Trans. A. Underwood), London/NYC, Penguin, 1997 (First Pub. 1926)