Author: The Humble Fabulist

Hello and welcome to my journal! Originally from Thessaloniki, Greece but living in Northern Europe for the past 30 years -the last ten of which in my adopted hometown Brussels, I try to surround myself with nice people & music & visual art & dance, because they make everyday life bearable & beautiful & rich. This is my growing collection of life’s little pleasures I wanted to share with you, but mainly keep and remember so that they don’t fade away… Since end of August 2016, my path brought me to the Big Apple. While I try to absorb the differences in life & culture, and try to grasp the sheer size of New York, I’ll be sharing my impressions in The Humble Fabulist.

Remaster || Trash & Vaudeville

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

They make an interesting pair, don’t you think?

  • Irena Haiduk, REMASTER, 2020
  • Irena Haiduk, REMASTER, 2020

REMASTER is Irena Haiduk‘s ongoing cinematic adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita (written 1928-40). Her project is guided by one of the central principles offered by the novel: the existing infrastructure of this world must be used to create a new one. Glittering surfaces, velvet furnishings, bright flowers, and shifting light conditions create a seductive environment containing fragments of spells and hidden designs. The sound of a cat’s purr reverberates around the galleries with both comfort and threat. [source: The Swiss Institute]

Trash and Vaudeville, was founded by Ray Goodman in 1975, back when St. Marks Place was the epicenter of the City’s rock-and-roll and bohemia. Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, the Ramones, and everyone who was anyone in the rock scene, were regulars. Tommy Hilfiger would buy clothes and resell them in his upstate stores Underground and People’s Place. It introduced Doc Martens to New Yorkers, the first ever shop in the United States to carry the brand. In 2016, it was relocated to 96 East 7th Street, not far from its original location, just far enough from the noodle shops that have taken over St. Marks Place.

January 20th, 2020

Kleindeutschland, St. Marks Place

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

On our way to the Swiss Institute, we passed by this wonderfully preserved building. Back home I looked it up, and it was only then I realised that the area was once the centre of Lower Manhattan’s German community. No coincidence then, that the Swiss chose the very same location for their Art Institute.

  • Deutsche-Amerikanische Schützen Gesellschaft || German-American Shooting Society Clubhouse
    12 St. Mark’s Place. Built 1888-89. Designed by William C. Frohne, architect
    A standing reminder of the important German immigrant community, the majority of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in the 19th century, when the area was known as Kleindeutschland || Little Germany
  • Raúl de Nieves || Humility (999), 2018. Resin, beads, dirt, artist hair. [detail]
  • Ramaya Tegegne || Genzkens/Wilsons, 2019. One of five Nefertiti bust replicas, with sunglasses
  • Raúl de Nieves || Humility (999), 2018. Resin, beads, dirt, artist hair. [detail]
  • Raúl de Nieves || Humility (999), 2018. Resin, beads, dirt, artist hair. [detail]

The Swiss Institute

January 19th, 2020

She Who Sees the Unknown

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

She Who Sees the Unknown: Kabous, The Right Witness and The Left Witness (2019), commissioned by The Shed, features a VR film, sculptures, and a bedroom installation. Upon entering a bedroom modeled after my childhood room in Iran, the audience will lie down on a daybed and put on a VR headset to view a film about Kabous, a jinn who brings nightmare and sleep paralysis to human body. Surrounding the bed are two 3D-printed sculptures of the ‘witnesses’ of Kabous (I have re-appropriated these two witnesses from different illustrations and named them the fictional characters of The Right Witness and The Left Witness).

– Written, created, and directed by Morehshin Allahyari; VR development by Pariah Interactive

The Shed

January 11th, 2020

Argument, Debate & other Thorny issues of the Human existence

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

by Agnes Denes

  • The Human Argument IV—Light Matrix, 1987/2012
  • The Human Argument IV—Light Matrix, 1987/2012
  • The Debate–One Million B.C.–One Million A.D., 1969 – Hand-carved plastic resin, electroplated plexiglass on illuminated base

    ”Look, these forms you see aren’t skeletons but you and I at a dinner party discussing the state of the world or the stock market. They are Hamlet and Socrates and Descartes and da Vinci. Children with imagination so eager to question, so desperate to communicate and to know the reason for this incredible journey through space. The never-ending spinning of the days following nights and nights becoming washed in sunlight, the winters and summers, the repetition and absurdity of it all, and to be born just to die, and all the while, the debate goes on to find an answer for this aberration that we are: Homo Communicatus, Homo Literatus, Homo Desperatus (or if you wish, animale, rationale, mortale.)”
    – Agnes Denes, 1967-68
  • The World of Thorns, 1968. Electroplated plexiglass and synthetic polymer paint on light box [detail]

From a retrospective of the work of Agnes Denes, at The Shed.

January 11th, 2020

Agnes Denes || 11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

Art – Humanity – Nature

In sync

  • Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule-11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years, 1992-96, (420 x 270 x 28 meters) Ylojarvi, Finland
    © Agnes Denes
  • Agnes Denes
    Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule, Ylojarvi, Finland – Architectural model (mixed media), 1992-96 [detail]
  • Agnes Denes
    Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule, Ylojarvi, Finland – Architectural model (mixed media), 1992-96 [detail]
  • Agnes Denes
    Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule, Ylojarvi, Finland – Architectural model (mixed media), 1992-96 [detail]
  • Agnes Denes
    Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule, Ylojarvi, Finland – Architectural model (mixed media), 1992-96 [detail]

”A huge manmade mountain measuring 420 meters long, 270 meters wide, 38 meters high and elliptical in shape was planted with eleven thousand trees by eleven thousand people from all over the world at the Pinzio gravel pits near Ylojarvi, Finland, as part of a massive earthwork and land reclamation project by environmental artist Agnes Denes. The project was officially announced by the Finnish government at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Earth Environment Day, June 5, l992, as Finland’s contribution to help alleviate the world’s ecological stress. Sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Tree Mountain is protected land to be maintained for four centuries, eventually creating a virgin forest. The trees are planted in an intricate mathematical pattern derived from a combination of the golden section and the pineapple/sunflower system designed by the artist. Even though infinitely more complex, it is reminiscent of ancient earth patterns.

Tree Mountain is the largest monument on earth that is international in scope, unparalleled in duration, and not dedicated to the human ego, but to benefit future generations with a meaningful legacy. People who planted the trees received certificates acknowledging them as custodians of the trees. The certificate is an inheritable document valid for twenty or more generations in the future, the first such document involving the future in human history. The project is innovative nationally and worldwide, the first such document in human history. This is the very first time in Finland and among the first ones in the world when an artist restores environmental damage with ecological art planned for this and future generations.

Tree Mountain, conceived in 1982, affirms humanity’s commitment to the future well being of ecological, social and cultural life on the planet. It is designed to unite the human intellect with the majesty of nature. Tree Mountain was dedicated in June, 1996 by the President of Finland, other heads of state, and people from everywhere.” [source]

From a retrospective of the work of Agnes Denes, at The Shed.

January 11th, 2020

Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

Introspection I–Evolution, 1968-71 [details]
Monoprint, 41-1/2 x 17 feet
Collection of George Washington Library Center,
Chicago, Illinois

Portrays evolutionary developments from the Psychozoic Era and the separation of man and ape to the development of intelligence and the beginnings of knowledge, science, and art.

Investigations: comparative anatomy, genetics, physics, biology, cytology, heredity, anatomy, mutation, environmental awareness, geneaology, cartography, communication, astronomy, time studies, linguistics, x-ray technology, time measurements, and art.

Colors of the Week, 1969 [last image]

From a retrospective of the work of Agnes Denes, at The Shed.

January 11th, 2020