Katya and the Power of Devil

Katya Kabanova ENO 2010

Poor Katya, she is full of love and desire, but unfortunately the men around her are week and her mother in law is the evil in disguise.

Married Katya becomes infatuated with another man, gives in to temptation and ends her life because of her sense of sin. However it is her evil mother in law in the background who directs the events, manipulates her and his husband and leads the human drama to the final tragedy.

The huge black shadows and the joyless sets of the performance suggest that life is either black or white, right or wrong, stifled or sinful. When confronted by the complexities of human relationships people become mad and psychotic. Life is messy.

Mother in Law and the Devil

Kaleidoscope and the Model of the Universe

E8, Garetti Lisi's New View of the Universe

Garetti Lisi's model of the universe places all known particles and the four fundamental forces of nature (electromagnetic, the strong force, the weak force and gravity) onto an exceptionally complex eight-dimensional 248-point mathematical model known as E8 that was formulated in the late 19th century.

Since E8 is perhaps the most beautiful structure in mathematics, it is very satisfying that nature appears to have chosen this geometry. Elegant simplicity and complexity combined with the inherit reflective qualities of our world; natural forms repeat themselves over and over, the fundamental structure of the universe is incredibly beautiful.

Patterns as seen through a kaleidoscope tube

The beauty of the colourful mirrored systems is the base of the geometric imagery of the kaleidoscope - a finite box containing an infinite vision that creates the sensation of being part of infinity. You feel like the whole universe is a hall of mirrors: reflections reflecting reflections.

Yayoi Kusama: Dots Obsession 2004

In today's art there is a progressive effort to move towards defocusing, in which no single element of the composition is given more importance than any others: there is a desire to break down the hierarchy of the elements.

Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese contemporary artist has an obsession for infinity. She perceives the world as an array of infinitely repeating patterns, which she has termed infinity nets. Her work is the expression of these visions. You are drawn into Kusama’s world like the centerpiece of an echoing, infinite landscape and experience the dissolving into the world around you.

Kusama currently lives in a mental institution in Tokyo by choice while creating her infinity works. For a normal brain to imagine infinity seems to be impossible.

Structure is God

Concert of Péter Mátrai in Budapest

When God enters into the creative process, you sense the divine structure of the Universe.

This is how you feel if you listen to the concert or Peter Matrai on electric instruments. There is a clear structure of the whole performance: preface, treatment and epilogue. And there is the clear structure of every piece with composition, melody and rhythm which build up the whole circle until the catharsis at the end.

The preface: the 'Intervals' with its dynamism invites you to leave your everyday self and enter into the world of art, into the world of the artist.

Small etudes follow: atmosphere, memories, sequences of feelings and thoughts, all this with different and unusual electronic instruments, computer samples, new sounds and noises. The concentration is intense, every element has meaning and is part of the whole. This is the journey of a soul: in his past and present, in his feelings, in his love for music. The small pieces have concrete themes, and you enjoy the correspondence of the music with them. You smile, you enjoy, you feel the music, you feel what you are inspired to feel.

And then comes the epilogue, the 'In memoriam' piece to the memory of two architect-friends. This is a small theatre-performance with candles, staggering, brutal hits and noises, flame, fire and ashes at the end.

Catharsis is what you feel: this is life, this is all.

The Music of Life

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at Barbican Centre, London

40 zebra finches are exploring an aviary for three months at Barbican Centre on amplified guitars and cymbals installed on sandy islands planted with grass. The spontaneous everyday activity of the beautiful tiny feathered creatures on the sensitive strings makes a complex soundscape from the speakers around the gallery.

There is no composition, structure and melody in this music. This is the music of the self-abandoned, free life, the repetition and interference of the patterns of continuous everyday activity.

Arranging the twigs, toddling on the strings, the different types of arrival: the gliding stir and tumbling throb; the light and dynamic variations of departure, the positioning and preening - these are the continuously flickering patterns without any compositional intent which have a comforting, captivating effect on the visitor.

There is a joyful aesthetic contrast between the tiny soft animals with their beautiful coloured feathers and the masculine, professional instruments: the sight and the sound together gives you a lightweight happiness.

A meditative experience.

Magical Numbers

To

good life

we need

only

3

virtues

FAITH HOPE LOVE

but

against the power of

evil

there are

7

deadly sins

to avoid

and

10

commandments

to keep

On the Paintings of Laszlo Szotyori

Laszlo Szotyori: Station Hall

Dazzling lightfall

pink vision upstairs

uncertain blue

shy yellow beneath

hesitant existence

of statuesque man-ghosts

in the shadow of light

Laszlo Szotyori: The Evening

Voiceless pointless

is the plane floating

in the landscape

its black shadow a gap

in the last ray of the sun

remotely a light clearing

further trees and the sea

oh the tired blue of the sky

the silent breath of the water

the black body of the plane

the mass of closed passengers

Laszlo Szotyori: The Meeting of Giants

In the flame of the church

in the light of faith hope love

humility and offering

is the plane bathing

suddenly

it comes to a halt

would stop for a prayer

Falling Angel

Angels are celesital beings connected to experiences without rational explanations.These mysterious winged messsengers are present everywhere: you rarely see them, you can only sense them. Their presence is felt when we use our imagination.

Angels do not neccesarily resemble the image we have of them. The pictures we find on paintings represent the wishful thinking of artists of diverse periods.

Flare II, a sculpture of dense wire mess of a falling figure within a wire cloud by Anthony Gromley has been installed in St Paul's Cathedral's Geometric Staircase in London. It leaves viewers to decide whether it is human or angel.

„Flare II is my attempt to use applied geometry to construct an energy field describing a human space in space.” – said Gormley.

Insomnia

Print of Anne Lindberg

"Insomnia is not bad in itself. You can lie awake at night and think; the quality of insomnia depends entirely on what you decide to think of. Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can. At night I lay awake at the darkness, listening to the silence, prefiguring the future, picking out of the past the scraps I had overlooked, so that the weight of destiny no longer bore on the current problems of my life, whatever they were at the time (for who lives without problems of everyday? Why waste the nights on them?)." Muriel Spark

Faithless: Insomnia

Acupressure points:

Embroidery language

This Hungarian folklore pattern speaks of love with an archaic sign language using the beauty of the tulip and the peacock as symbols of male and female sex, fertility, sun and heaven. The reversed heart form is the symbol of male sex, the open tulips are for female fertility, and the plum-like shape between is for female genitals. The tulip opens up to the sky and offers herself to heaven. All this activity is catalysed on the warmth of the sun symbolised by the peacock-eye pattern.