sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

video: sonder: everyone has a story

Two weeks, at Balse.

Big event, with the advice from ClassicAsobi NYC, the securing of the 2023-24 LA Phil, Disney Concert Hall subscription, is the start of our update. The subscription is for nine concerts with Front Orchestra second row, dead center seat. Made four concert exchanges and constructed an optimal schedule.

***Hank Willis Thomas - I've Known Rivers***
July 24, 2023
***PACE GALLERY*** ***Los Angeles***
***Jul 15 – Aug 26, 2023***

The Blaze - DREAMER (Official Video)

Alex Andre introduced and really want to see this film - EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022), next on my list. In music, I have been kind of obsessed with METTE - Mama's Eyes (Official Video), great song, wonderful video work. Also the remix work is awesome. For DJ mixes, a very solid techno by David Vunk, fun, reliable. This Anetha is also very fun, absolutely love the transy vibe.

***The Flower Show***
July 28, 2023
*LA LOUVER*
***7 Jun - 1 Sep 2023***

On the classical front, ClassicAsobi proposed a challenge to check out three different conducting and recording of Shostakovich Symphony no. 5 Scythian Suite. Been listening to all of them several times, to continue next week.

Decided to take one-on-one Italian lesson with Linda, from Italy. Met her at the farmers market about a year ago. Balse is going to Venezia, IT, in May 2024 to research the Venezia Biennale Arte 2024, and staying with the architect friends, Tea and Lomberto, I need to seriously up my Italian skills with the aim to have a decent level of basic casual conversation with them.

Allora,

Gotta have cats in the mix, and rock, as spice. Some philosophy with Žižek.

Contemporary art photography with Richard Mosse.

‘If you take one square inch of the rain forest, it’s just, it’s tripping with life. Just the amount of species is extraordinary.“
“so, it’s everywhere. It’s all around us, but how do we implicate the viewer? This is the real problem and the one that we wanted to do. “

More spicey musik.

And more nice techno. And some more.

The magnificent Mette, all about Mette the last week.

Wishing you a good one, will see you back in two weeks .

Charles Balse

Words of Wisdom

“To know nature, the soul, god, love … These are known by the heart, not the mind.” Dostoevskey argues that thought cannot unriddle the mystery of creation because “mind is a material faculty,” and as such is not in touch with transcendental truth. “Mind is an instrument, a machine, moved by the fire of the soul.” It is the soul that is the true medium for attaining the highest knowledge, for ”if the goal of knowledge is love and nature, this opens up a clear field for the heart.” Poetry is thus just as much a medium of knowledge as philosophy because “ the pet in the transport of inspiration, unriddles god.” - Dostoevsky, A Writer in HIs Time, Joseph Frank page 57, Zettel 136
Thus what abstract artists contend - and abstract art itself bears out - is that an impression, a sensory stimulation of the retina, is merely a spark for associative recall. The abstract painter does not attempt to provide pictorial detail, but rather to create conditions that enable the viewer to complete the picture based on his or her own unique experience. Legend has it that upon viewing a sunset painted by Turner, a young woman remarked, “I never saw a sunset like that, Mr. Turner,” to which Turner replied, “Don’t you wish you could, madam?” - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science” by Erick Kandel, page 115, Zettel 123
Rothko saw such reductionism as necessary: “The familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment” (ROss 1991). Only by pushing the limits of color, abstraction, and reduction, he argued, can the artist create an image that librates us from conventional associations with color and form and allows our brain to form new ideas, associations, and relationships - and new emotional responses to them. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, by Erick Kandel, page 126, Zettel 124
…Instead of the staged explorations of artifice delivered by Cindy Sherman, he delivers the results of a heartfelt improvised dance between photographer and sitter where landscape comes projected through clothing and time is revealed in every blemish and fold of skin….Together, the photographer and his subjects had succeeded in delivering piercing looks at the wear of life’s struggles. - John Rohrbach, preface of “In the American West” Richard Avedon, Zettel 125
Help others by focusing on the most pressing social problems rather than those you stumble into - those that are big in scale, neglected and solvable. To make the largest contribution to those problems, consider earning to give, research and advocacy, as well as direct work. - 80,000 hours, Benjamin Todd, Zettel 127
In focusing on color, Rothko was searching for a new style of abstraction that would link modern art forms that reach out to the infinite. To achieve this, he abandoned figuration and focused exclusively on the expressive power of large fields of color. His experiments inspired a number of artists to follow his lead, to free color from objective contexts, inhibit access to figurative associations, and make it a subject of its own. In a way, Rothko succeeded in achieving what biologists, including biologists of perception and memory, try to do with reductionist science. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, by Erick Kandel page 130, Zettel 128
As (Agnes) Martin put it, Rothko “reached zero so that nothing could stand in the way of truth.”....As Rothko was to say about these later works, “A painting is not a picture of an experience. It is an experience.” - Reduction in Art and Brain Science, by Erick Kandel, page 130, Zettel 129