Two weeks, at Balse.

A superb, must see documentary film by Wim Wenders - Anselm (2023) - Official Trailer, on the German contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer. Stunning. Great for learning the artist and his works.

Danh Vo Interview: Art Should Estrange - experiencing his work at the Venezia Biennale Arte 2015 Danish Pavilion may have been the first true and deep encounter with contemporary art. Continuing the research on the artist.

Other contemporary art research Berlinde De Bruyckere (Interview). And found this nice video of the actual Pierre Huyghe <Liminal> exhibition at the Punta Della Dogana.

What do I know - Montaigne - the art of living. ESSAIS, to experiment, to try.

Logic is not for me, she says. Logic is not hospitable to a creative mind. interesting. Love it.

Some Nietzsche - Nietzsche and The Human Animal: The Domesticated and The Strong

"In order to be able to create, we must give ourselves greater freedom than has been given us before; at the same time, liberation from morality and relief through festivals (premonitions of the future! celebrate the future; not the past! compose the myth of the future! live in hope!) Blissful moments! And then cover up the curtain again and turn our thoughts to fixed, close goals." (Nietzsche)
"Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all." (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

Suffering and bliss - you DO need suffering in your life | Arthur Brooks. More, Carl Jung - The Psychology of The Hero - Carl Jung's Archetype, and a bit new-agey but nevertheless, some research done Eckhart Tolle on Transforming Desire into Fulfillment

Visiting documentaries on Martin Margiela fashion designer. And other fashion related studies.

Research on art critique. ADSR Art Critique method - a method of understanding works of art and design. No, I did not go to art school, and I am interested in the method.

Meet the Collectors | Troy Carter - a fresh perspective. Interviewing art collectors.

**IVA GUEORGUIEVA Seascapes, Snowscapes, Kukeri**
NIGHT GALLERY SOUTH
JUNE 22 - AUGUST 24, 2024

DJ sets:

007 CULTUR FM (2024 Live Afrobeats Mix by Tayo Iku)
parismatiq vol.7 | aprtment life x nomad travel club (alternative r&b, amapiano, afro sounds)
Charli XCX | Boiler Room & Charli XCX Presents: PARTYGIRL
TDJ | SCR Guestmix | SCR
Uma Scheffer | Boiler Room: Buenos Aires

Music
somewhere in Between (full album)
Tokyo Underground - Short Film (R35 GT-R, BMW E30, FD RX-7, Honda NSX and more)
ayrtn - FEEL THA BASS

till next time.

Charles A. Balse

**Hiroto Tomonaga -望遠 In the distance**
KOSAKU KANECHIKA
June 1 to June 29, 2024

Words of Wisdom

Yet one thing is clear: Leonardo da Vinci did not view the visual arts - especially painting - as a science: as far as he was concerned they were the science. He recognized the impossibility of communicating scientific ideas without recourse to visual art as the knowledge in question had to be illustrated in order to be understood correctly. Anatomy, for example, cannot rely on written descriptions alone, it must be recorded and disseminated visually as well. All this led Leonardo to the conclusion that knowledge and understanding - the foundations of science - could not exist without painting. Through him, there was a growing awareness that art in general and painting in particular could contribute to the further development of knowledge in the broadest sense. In this way, he definitively paved the way for artists towards the sciences - artes as they were known at the time, while conversely demonstrating that imagination and creativity

- ingenium or ingenuity - are essential to the achievement of new insights.

NEW HISTORY OF WESTERN ART - Chapter 2 Art as Idea page 149

Both that which appeared to Ezekiel in the desert imploring him to be not afraid and the little figurine are terrifying, but beautiful as well, for what they embody and represent are that sacred and forever-distant world of meaning that for a few brief moments sometimes intercedes in prosaic exis-tence. Cohen's observations about the prevalence of the word "angel" in the radical poetry of the Beats (and in his own work) speak to something that creative artists have always known-that this something always shimmers a bit when engulfed in the process. Creative acts-painting and dancing, music and writing-are so often where that enchanted conduit to the transcendent remains obvious. It should be pointed out that so often the miracle of angels is a literary one; the being that commands Ezekiel to eat a scroll rolled in honey, making those words part of his flesh; Gabriel appearing to the Prophet Muhammad with the perfection of the Qur'an; Moroni with Joseph Smith and those golden tablets of Palmyra. Angels are writers. And dancers. And musicians. And painters. And sculptors. They endure because they are such a perfect encapsulation of the mysteriousness that still defines creation, that can't be entirely explained away by neurology or sociology. They are like what Federico García Lorca called the duende. - ELYSIUM, Ed Simon, page 11

**Julie Mehretu. Ensemble**
17.03.24 — 06.01.25
Palazzo Grassi, Venezia

"It would be tempting to reach for a universal definition that could apply across all these cultural settings," writes Valery Rees in From Gabriel to Lucifer: A Cultural History of Angels. Supernatural beings or cultural archetypes, transcendent creatures or poetic symbols? Or somehow all of these things?Rees writes that if "we wish to consider the idea of angel as a psychological archetype we must first decide whether we are considering a simple messenger, a protector, a concept of goodness, a motivating idea, or a soul free from bodily form. For angels fulfill all these roles." Their variability is certainly part of what makes angels so evocative still, but Rees's identification goodness as being one of their most important attributes can neither be skirted over nor sandwiched between other roles of such beings. "Goodness," after all, is one of the most operative connotations of the very word. "You're an angel," "Be an angel," "She was an angel." For all that is mysterious about the heavenly choir — their behavior and appearance, their function and their agency-nothing is stranger than their goodness It remains the great scandal of the angelic, arguably the great scandal of ethics. In our bloody and wicked century, inheritor of the monstrous twentieth century, nothing can seem more foreign, more irrational, than goodness. To be good is to not act in self-interest; it's to reject the instrumentalization of other people, it's to recognize someone else beyond the veil of culturally and economically enforced solipsism. Goodness remains radical, it remains strange and yet it's very much real. In making angels symbolic of goodness, there is a union of metaphysics and ethics, so often kept philosophically distant, though they are intrinsically connected. To say that angels are symbols of transcendence and of ecstasy must not be purchased with an ignorance of goodness, for such mystical reveries are only masturbation unless they also acknowledge the idea of goodness, the idea of the sanctification and sacredness of other consciousnesses. - ELYSIUM, Ed Simon, page 11