UNKNOWN TRANSITION
Issue 4
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Editor-in-Chief Raphael Reuben
Magazine Secretary Nina Hakovirta
Film Editor Charles Dos Santos
Literature Editors Ming Li Molly Bell
Visual Arts Editors Melissa Delmee Maletras Ruxandra Blaga
Proofreader Caitlin Burge Jasmine Bhatt Stefan Kielbasiewicz
Layout Editors Melissa Delmee Maletras Ming Li Molly Bell Ruxandra Blaga
Illustrator Beth Fereday
For our fourth issue, Transition, we received a wide range of material that challenged our preconceptions of what discussion could be had about such a seemingly straightforward topic. From communal cinema to the lonely Netflix experience; from the memory of reading a `Classical Chinese novel to the age of Sparknotes; from the perception of art on canvas to the digital screen, this issue explores transition in its many different manifestations. It also features two poems, a comparative commentary on the mediums of literature and film, and an interview with an international artist about their latest project. As always, visual artworks have been interwoven throughout. I’d like to thank everyone that submitted their work. Without our contributors, this issue wouldn’t have been possible. I’d also like to thank the editing team for the countless hours of collaboration and hard work behind the scenes to get the issue ready. It seems quite fitting that Transition is my last issue as Chief Editor of Unknown Magazine. Having been part of the project since its inception, it has been a marvellous experience to watch it grow. I’d like to take the opportunity to wish all the best to the new Chief Editors Ming and Molly who, I am sure, will continue to produce some fine work. Finally, to you the reader, we hope you find this unique issue as enjoyable to read as it has been to work on.
Contents 4-6
How Did They Ever Make A Movie of Lolita
8-9
Our Own “Great Leap Forward�
Aisling Press
Ming Li
12-13
Cinema: the Importance of the Stranger
16-19
The Painted Desert Project
22-24
You Are All A Lost Generation
25 26-33
Charles Dos Santos
Melissa Delmee Maletras
Molly Bell
Flight Miranda Batki-Braun
From the Artist to Viewer Materiality to Immaterality Canvas to Pixel Ruxandra Blaga
34-37
To An Old Born King i-iv Jorel Chan
Cover Image Andrei Tudoran
How Did They Ever Make A Movie of Lolita? Vladimir Nabokov’s provocative novel, Lolita, was adapted for screen by Stanley Kubrick in 1962. Aisling Press considers this tale of an old professor’s affair with his juvenile step-daughter and questions whether the novel’s potent story can survive such radical transition.
H
“ ow did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” heralded Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. The question foregrounds the complexities of adapting such a provocative text. It could simply be an expression of the controversial transposition of a novel onto the screen. However, this sensationalist piece of advertising also draws attention to the potential exploitation of the eponymous Lolita. A movie has been made, not with Lolita, but rather out of her. After all, the image accompanying this slogan sexualises the “nymphet,” and there is nothing to help us decipher the character from the work. Should we infer that we are also complicit in her objectification? As a reader, we were in a position of superiority, criticising Humbert as he stared at Lolita’s body lounging in a shady garden. As a cinematic audience we watch transfixed. No longer independent of Humbert’s gaze, we share in it and thus inhabit the dubious territory of the voyeur. The provocative advertisement draws attention to the viewer’s tenuous position. But this is just one of the many issues associated with the transition of Lolita from a taboo work of fiction to an alternative rendition of a relationship so complex it had never before been cinematically portrayed. Supposing the audience is complicit in the objectification of Lolita, this could be perceived as an encouragement to defy the presupposed norms of society. Our voyeuristic collusion reduces the severity of Humbert’s numerous indiscretions as we are compelled to see events from his perspective, both in terms of the novel’s narration and the salacious leer of the camera itself. This includes Lolita’s tantalising sexuality. No longer the twelve-year-old infant, cinema’s Lolita has aged two years. Richard Corliss commented on this transition: “The book is about child abuse; the movie is about the wiles a teenage girl might have learned in those two years: an awareness of her power over men.” Humbert’s role is difficult to categorise in the novel. Is he a hero, anti-hero, leading man, villain or paedophile? The novel form presents a character who is constructed in the mind of the reader, but in the film our conceptual influence is removed. James Mason took the starring role in Kubrick’s film. He was a celebrity, inevitably encouraging an affectionate response from the audience with his quintessential 60’s aesthetic appeal. Casting therefore has a direct influence on the audience’s reaction towards Humbert, exercising the director’s prominence in shaping our perception of character.
Kubrick’s film was conceived within the limitations of the Hays Code censorship guidelines. The compulsory omission of more explicit scenes inevitably detracts from the sheer sexual violence Humbert exhibits within the novel. It could also be argued that the sexually virile behaviour of Lolita is diminished. In the cinematic adaptation she does not explicitly admit to having lost her virginity at summer camp, nor seducing her stepfather. The constrictive medium of film therefore subdues the novel’s palpable sexuality. The cinematic audience and the reader both experience the conflicting emotional response that the plot engenders but the film’s exclusion of provocative detail dilutes the potency of an audience’s reaction. In both forms the comic elements modify the intensity of the romantic relationship, although the sarcastic irony present in the novel is perhaps more sophisticated than the slapstick cinematic humour. Nevertheless, Kubrick and Nabokov both counterbalance this comic diffusion, using other motifs to signify the murky world of sexual conquest. Adapting to censorship, Kubrick incorporates veiled portrayals of Lolita’s sexual provocation. We witness Lolita bringing breakfast to the Professor; she eagerly eats his bacon, forgoing the cutlery available, before feeding him a fried egg by hand. The mutual hunger depicted in this scene portends Humbert’s violent lust and hints at Lolita’s latent desire. The greasy egg subverts the traditionally sensual act of feeding one’s lover. It smears Lolita, sullying the scene and exposing her tainted innocence. She is infantilised, to an almost animalistic extent, by her refusal to use cutlery and this encourages revulsion at Humbert’s infatuation.
“The book is about child abuse; the movie is about the wiles a teenage girl might have learned in those two years” The film appears to strike at the heart of the 60’s America zeitgeist within which the novel was reconceived. John F. Kennedy was promising to carve America into a “New Frontier” of justice and liberty and here is a film that settles provocatively on the boundaries of sexual liberation and crime. Humbert is foreign, representing the perceived threat of the “other,” but the propensity to focus on foreign menace is subverted by the character of Clare Quilty – an educated American celebrity – who reveals himself, in many ways, to be more depraved than Humbert. The novel’s cosy setting of a New Hampshire hamlet troubles the image of wholesome America further as a monster dwells behind the manicured lawns and patio doors. The novel is littered with references to esteemed American institutions compounding this perception and tainting them by association. Unfortunately, the linear narrative of the cinematic portrayal fails to capture the listless agitation of the novel’s lovers. In Nabokov’s original rendition they roam the United States in a seemingly endless pursuit of an unknown haven. Although Humbert and Lolita’s flit across the States is included in the cinematic version, the feeling of utter pointlessness is somehow diminished.
Their pilgrimage towards nothing becomes significant only in terms of the breadth of America it encompasses. It may embody the decade’s veiled progression towards turbulence but fails to expose how Lolita and Humbert’s incessant movement serves as a harbinger of their prospective turmoil.
“The contrasts between the two creations are both overt and intricately veiled but the impact of the work in both mediums is immutable” Lolita as a film was, in both commercial and critical terms, a triumph. However, its success does inevitably pose an uncomfortable discrepancy as the novel was initially refused publication whereas the film was nominated for nine awards. The contrasts between the two creations are both overt and intricately veiled but the impact of the work in both mediums is immutable. The need to visually depict events detracts from some of the book’s subtle nuances and cinematic censorship produces a Lolita that is decidedly less dynamic and more restrained. The sheer visual impact of film as an art form, however, does compensate for this, exaggerating the implicit voyeurism present in the novel and thus imposing the shock of our own complicity to replace the absence of explicit sexual disturbance. The dilemmas we face, both as a readership and an audience, remain perplexing and irrefutable. Evidently, Lolita’s power to transfix one’s gaze will continue to disturb us regardless of the artistic environment in which she is placed.
Image - Ruxandra Blaga
Our “Own Great Leap Forward” “The world is changed. I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.” – Lady Galadriel (Lord of the Rings, film adapation)
Technology
has become a ubiquitous companion to modern readers. Its advancement instigated widespread access to literature, most notably in Johannes Gutenburg’s invention of the mechanical printing press in the fifteenth century. With a Kindle, the traveling bibliophile can carry libraries up mountains. Literature’s affair with technology has been persistent and lucrative throughout the years, but as our technological companion is so difficult to shake, I’m starting to wonder the price of such relationship. As an eleven-year-old boy, I viewed reading with apathy. When my father announced that he had bought me a gift, no books were amongst the shimmering muddle of presents I began to envisage. I watched in horror when I was presented with this “gift” – a Chinese amalgamation of legend, myth and history – written in Classical Chinese and spanning more than two thousand pages: Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Renowned as one of the “Four Greatest Masterpieces” of Chinese literature, it successfully made itself the most depressing gift I had ever been given. “Try the first five chapters, Ming,” my father said when he saw my indignant tears, “if you don’t like it, drop it.” Despite the obstacle of understanding Classical Chinese, I began my mission without delay. “Finish the first five chapters,” I thought, “just five chapters and summer can
begin.” The praiseworthy kid that I was, I opened the book with full attention and was confronted with the poignancy of the opening line, which is translated as follows: «The world under heaven, after a long period of division, will be united; after a long period of union, must be divided.» Here, in one sentence, my affair with reading began. My father’s decision to specify “five chapters” remains unexplained. It could have been an arbitrary number or perhaps he picked it strategically. The first four chapters introduce the turbulent final years of the Han Dynasty, and Chapter Five contains one of the most notorious scenes in Chinese literature: The Three Brothers, Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei – founders of the kingdom Shu – battle Lu Bu, arguably the fiercest warrior in all Chinese history. When the battle reaches deadlock, Lu Bu retreats and the chapter ends with Zhang Fei calling for pursuit. My duty was fulfilled; five dreaded chapters rested underneath my right hand but, beneath my left, Lu Bu was escaping. (The arrangement of Chinese books is in reverse order: we read from right to left.) I could not abandon Zhang Fei. Inevitably, I decided to read on and continued my journey with them. The complex symbolism or allegory remained obscure and the sophistication of Classical Chinese was beyond my aptitude.
Nevertheless, the early affinity I felt kindled my fledgling romance with literature and led my journey beyond those three kingdoms. Today, despite technology’s apparent advancement of reading, the distinctiveness of literature has been lost. Social media, forums and blogs incessantly overwhelm us with words; short and direct articles are often designed for surface knowledge and demand minimal attention. With the improvement of technology, we have thousands of books invariably within reach and yet so often they are usurped by the seduction of social media. A vicious cycle is created as our attention spans inevitably regress and in turn the writing that can engage us diminishes. Software such as Sparknotes, provides students with neatly summarised guides on almost every subject and Summly – a program condensing literature into extremely short accounts – continuously provides an easier and speedier read. Novels are reduced to brief, sterile outlines and online analysis of poems precede the reader’s own interpretation. No longer challenged, capacity for independent thought is limited to, and by, these remnants of original material; easily digestible but retaining little of their initial zeal. The omnipresent images from endless film adaptations rob imagination from our reading, spreading like viruses through the Internet and into our mind. Visual stimulation of our senses triumphs over the imagination we had established through our indulgence among those few pages.
Technology has certainly advanced humanity’s initial engagement with reading, particularly in improving access to literature, but modern readers are being led astray. In 1958, Mao Zedong launched his “Great Leap Forward,” an attempt to transform China from a predominately agrarian society to an industrial one in five years. Within three it was abandoned. Lacking specific knowledge and preparation, the plan caused an immense waste of resources and environmental damage. Mao’s “leap” led to an estimated death toll of between twenty and forty-five million people. In the twenty-first century, another destructive motion is being enacted. Our “leap” is built upon the myth of progression and the everlasting desire for improvement, but if we pay no attention to our destination, who knows what will become of us? Technology appears to be propelling and improving our lifestyle but, in relation to reading, the reverse consistently occurs. After more than a decade, the opening line of the first novel I read taught me a valuable lesson by offering me an alternative perspective. An old man once told me that there’s only one road. It is like a great river, its springs are at every doorstep, and every path is its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business…going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” His name was J. R. R. Tolkien.
“ Our ‘leap’ is built upon the myth of
progression and the everlasting desire for improvement”
Ming Li
Les Cliquetis du Hasard by Dominique Hoffer
Cinema: The Importance of the Stranger Whenever I have the time, I like going
to the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square. It’s not to see the most recent films or blockbusters but often to watch films that sit at home in my DVD collection. I have to endure a thirty-minute train journey, bankruptingly expensive popcorn and frequent interruptions from drink-slurpers. Why? Because I want to experience the film, not just watch it. There has been a transition away from going to the cinema in recent years. Spectatorship of films has begun to stray away from the collective experience it used to be. Today, we are much more likely to stream from Netflix or rent from Sky than go to the local art house cinema. So how exactly does this transition away from the cinema impact the way we experience films? David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) is one of my favourite films. Who can resist being jealous of Sailor finding a woman like Lula? She makes the “whole world wild at heart and weird on top.” Sailor is probably the only man on earth able to make a girl “hotter than Georgia Asphalt” wearing a snakeskin jacket. It’s Lynch at his best – so when I heard that it was being screened as a part of movie marathon at the Prince Charles Cinema, I decided to go. I assumed the role of just another anonymous stranger in a dark room, waiting to see a film I’d seen more times than I cared to count. I found that my experience of the film was completely transformed just because I saw it at a
cinema. The little things in the film that I’d never recognised before revealed themselves – scenes that were slightly comical became hilariously funny. One– liners that never stood out before came to the foreground. It was as if the whole film was magnified and became a more intense form. The escapades of Sailor and Lula across the American South rose to a new level of weird and wonderful. Being a person in a collective audience, you realise – by that laugh to the left of you or the grimace to the right – a film you thought you knew so well secretly holds a variety of forms, that can only be unlocked when surrounded by faceless spectators in an auditorium.
“My experience of the film was completely transformed just because I saw it at a cinema” The cinema is by far the most important forum cinephiles have at their disposal – whether they realise it or not. Whilst losing the opportunity of a communal experience of film would be devastating, cinephiles should realise that there is more at stake with the decline of art house cinema. The institution of the cinema has mothered some of the most important directors of the last century. All we need to do is look at the New Wave Cinema that healed post-war France in the 50s and 60s. The majority of these directors were self-professed cinephiles of the Cahiers du Cinema magazine, including Godard, Truffaut, and Bazin. They would become
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
the influential fathers of modern cinema. Without such a facility, independent cinema will struggle to find a platform that is not overwhelmed by the latest big-cast, big-bucks blockbuster. Cinema is a vital medium that allows powerful films of humble origins to reach audiences. Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994) is an ode to the importance of independent film making and distribution. The crude, loose-tongue comedy was the result of a 21 day shoot, a less than $30,000 budget and a local grocery store. It would become a cult classic, stealing awards at both Cannes and Sundance. Without the loving support of independent cinema and cinephiles with a penchant for a rough diamond, it is safe to say the film would never have caught the beady eye of Miramax. People are capable of making powerful films but without a channel to distribute these films, their true power can never be realised.
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For the last three years, there has been a nationwide project to revitalise the cinema. The Scalarama Project aims to fill the world with cinemas – “Cinema is not just the film. Everything around it matter.” A cinema does not just have to be an auditorium or a theatre – all that is needed is a film and an audience. The project encourages cinephiles to use alternative spaces to reinvigorate the cinema tradition. It could be a boat, a warehouse, a gazebo, even the local pub – any space has the potential to be a cinema. There is a national insurgence to resist the transition away from the collective film experience. If cinema cannot thrive under the pulls and manipulation of the current industry, we must explore new and exciting ways to reinvigorate it. It is up to us – the film-lovers – to create and cherish the screens that give independent film a platform to be seen. Charles Dos Santos
“ cinema does not just have to be an auditorium or a theatre – all that is needed is an audience”
capturing time
Images - Marie Sez
The Painted Desert Project In the ÂŤ Four Corners Region Âť of the US, a fascinating collaborative art project has taken place. Started in 2012 by Chip Thomas aka Jetsonorama, this enterprise in the Navajo Nation saw its third edition last summer.
Work by Monica Canilao and Doodles. On picture (L-R): Monica Canilao, Jetsonorama and Doodles
Work by Alexis Diaz (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
Chip Thomas moved to the Navajo Nation 26 years ago as a full-time physician
and spent time getting to know the community and photographing them. A few years ago he decided to enlarge some of his negatives and paste them on roadside vendor’s stands. His project was a success: the murals made tourists stop on their way to touristic sites of the area. Members of the community then asked him to continue on other stands. The Painted Desert Project grew out of that. Since 2012, Thomas has invited international artists to the Reservation. He pairs them with members of the community to learn about Navajo traditions and way of life before asking them to paint roadsides vendor’s stands in the Reservation. They are asked to create artwork reflecting their experience in the reservation in harmony with the community and their imagery. When discussing the artists’ work Thomas said, “Their work bridges tradition and contemporary practice.” On the one hand, the project “is of the muralist tradition – exemplified by the work of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros – which is rooted in the ethos of the community where the art appears, while the imagery embodies a celebration of the individuals on the reservation.” On the other hand, it draws upon the very contemporary practice of Street Art, which uses the wall as a medium, a democratic means of expression. “Many of the artists who participate in the Painted Desert Project are from Latin American countries such as Argentina, Ecuador and Puerto Rico where there is a long history of political dissent expressed on the street through traditional muralism, and graffiti.” The Painted Desert becomes, then, the embodiment of a wide dialogue between cultures and historical periods.
Work by Alexis Diaz (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
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“ ts important to me to bring such artists to the reservation – to expand people’s perception of how art can be shared and to see that graffiti doesn’t have to be vandalism.” – Chip Thomas aka Jetsonorama
Work by Roa (Belgium)
Aside from the aesthetic and historical aspect of this project, the human factor is also deeply important, if not the most. The community first accepted the project because it improved their everyday life. The Navajo Nation is one of the poorest places of Arizona. Members of the community sell their craft and jewellery in roadside stands to earn a livelihood. The artworks made during this project changed the landscape and made the place more accessible and friendly – the increased number of tourists stopping is proof of that. Poverty has almost always made people feel uncomfortable and Art is a way of overcoming that.
Work by Nils Westergard (Richmond, VA)
“
The Painted Desert Project is evolving. I was very happy last summer when Nick Mann returned to the reservation to build a food stand for a woman whose food stand burned down 2 years ago. Nick was involved in painting the original food stand in 2012.
During the week he and artist Monica Canilao worked on the new food stand in my back yard. Mrs. Woody, the woman who became the owner of the new food stand, came to my house every day with her son, daughter and her grandchildren to watch the progress and to participate in the construction and painting of the food stand. Although I’ve been here for 27 years Mrs. Woody and her family had never come to my house. During the week the food stand was being built Mrs. Woody would bring food for us. It truly felt like the final product was a collaboration with this family. To this day it has deepened my relationship with them and makes me a more empathetic physician whenever I see members of this family in the clinic. It’s my hope that the project will find more community service oriented projects that ultimately bridge cultures and brings people from disparate cultures a little closer. Chip Thomas aka Jetsonorama ”
Melissa Delmee Maletras
Petite Fille d’après Rodin Thomas Carrere
self portrait
Images - Marie Sez
“You Are All A Lost Generation” Gertrude Stein in conversation chal novel The Sun Also Rises suitably returns the narrative to its parenthood; this is literature conceived within an era plagued by loss and it was mothered by Gertrude Stein. Stein not only delivered the Lost Generation its name but also nurtured a company of its artists from her home in Paris, the infamous 27 rue de Fleurus. Samuel Hynes elaborates the term: “Lost means not vanished but disoriented, wandering, directionless – a recognition that there was great confusion and aimlessness among the war’s survivors in the early postwar years.” These survivors were unable to engage with formerly revered values, such as honour, having witnessed thousands die in their attempts to fulfill them. Centuries before, Shakespeare’s Falstaff had mocked such concepts with comic effect – “What is honour? A word. What is in that word ‘honour?’ What is that ‘honour?’ Air.” But with the end of war a terrible question loomed: what if Falstaff was right; “what if honour really was just ‘a word?’” Nestled in Stein’s art-stuffed salon the lost artists sought answers. In response to such despair, many pursued immediate gratification. With no abstract ideals to strive for, hedonism spread and honour was usurped. Parties – epitomised by Sinclair Lewis in Babbit as “whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires” were examined by writers who reveled in heady chaos and eventually discovered an uncomfortable truth. If war had bombarded the modern world and left it hollow then subsequent debauchery
Image - Molly Bell
The epigraph to Ernest Hemingway’s epo-
served only to expand this emptiness. F. Scott Fitzgerald, another of Stein’s prodigies, expressed this in his 1922 novel The Beautiful and Damned: “desire just cheats you… we poor fools try to grasp it – but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else.” The inter-war period was a time of despondency and hollow desire, but literature and art served as an outlet for such feeling. Indeed the influence of art cannot be ignored in a consideration of Stein’s fellow writers. Artists paraded frequently in her salon with the authors and poets. Their relationships led to a hybrid of art and letters. Stein’s own work Tender Buttons is poetry conversant in cubism, veiling its objects through the very medium of its portrayal; Wright Morris aligned Hemingway’s
writing with the Cézannes that adorned 27 rue de Fleurus: “A Cézanne–like simplicity of scene is built up with the touches of a master, and the great effects are achieved with a sublime economy.” Thus a small apartment in Paris blurred creative boundaries and those “lost” in a sterile world discovered the fecund nature of the arts; from a landscape of shattered ideals these artists gathered strength and became prolific. So why Paris? Many of the writers assembling there were expats of America, including Harold Edmund Stearns, who described the land he fled as having “no flexibility, no colour.” Conversely, Paris was perceived as the capital of bohemian culture and “as vast as a firmament, reaching out into infinity” (Émile Zola). This vitality offered a new form of creative export. The development of small press encouraged diversity and more subversive literature. James Joyce’s Ulysses developed in a suitably patchwork manner, published serially in The Little Review magazine and later at Shakespeare and Company. This independent bookstore, opened by Sylvia Beach in 1919, was another hub of creativity and Hemingway described it as a “warm, cheerful place.” The entrepreneurialism of arts in Paris certainly animated many writers, particularly as magazine deadlines encouraged sustained commitment to their work. The support of local stores and figures, such as Stein, provided a sense of constancy after the sprawling dangers of war. Offering liberation and comfort, the city was a catalyst for alienated writers. These expats may have entered Paris as a Lost Generation but twenties Paris soon
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became a home for wandering artistic souls; somewhere at last to write and be found. Considering the belligerent conception of the Lost Generation and the city that fostered so many of its drifting company, an unsettling notion arises: Did they ever answer the question, “what of ‘honour?’” No answer seems to have been posited by Stein’s community of artists, at least not with resolve. We imagine the Lost Generation to have been swept into the Second World War along with all their inquiries, but if no answer has been found then perhaps we are unwittingly still searching. If so, then developing an approach similar to the members of 27 rue de Fleurus may benefit this exploration. Even without emigration or apartments brimming with visionary inhabitants, we can use literature to examine our contemporary society; use it to reconsider modern warfare and its implications, to reject debauchery and to consider the implications of believing in ideals once more. But if inspiration is lacking and you sit before a sterile page wishing you had lived amongst the Lost, then know this; there is one haven that begs of you a visit: Shakespeare and Company. The original bookstore, swelling with its initial success, migrated by a tentative half kilometre in 1921 but was forced shut by the resurgence of war. George Whitman’s reverent tribute opened in 1951, carrying the store even further into the Quartier Latin’s vibrant bustle. Shakespeare and Company still occupies the heart of bohemian Paris. The store harbours the memory of its predecessor and frames, in its bold green windows, the Notre Dame from above and the route of Hemingway’s hazy stumblings home below.
“ small apartment in Paris blurred creative boundaries and those ‘lost’ in a sterile world discovered the fecund nature of the arts”
This literary haven may no longer boast the walls that held so many of the Lost Generation but they are imprinted in its spirit. Displaced writers will still find a bed here, just as before. The poetry section initiates intimate conversations and brushing elbows as strangers shut themselves into a tiny nook and share a knowing smile – “it feels like they’re still here.” Upstairs resounds with new fingers animating the store’s worn piano;
scraps of paper are pinned to the walls conveying fond memories of lovers and friends departed. Then at last, discovering the library section’s rose-pillowed seats, ruffled by the hours of reading that preceded your own, you will find it. The typewriter. It rests in the haze of soft Parisian sunlight and gazes upon the streets of St Michel, whispering seductively: “write…”
Molly Bell
“Then at last, discovering the library section’s rose-pillowed seats, ruffled by the hours of reading that preceded your own, you will find it”
Image: Màtè Ternyk
Flight Breath; a whisper, Shimmering in the light. Rustle; a swaying, Dancing in flight. Anticipation; the next wave, Gathers pebbles through its rake. Wash me back to the present, To leaves floating like flakes. I ran through these comets, Tossed up by the swirl. In the midst of their chatter, Found myself - a young girl. Whisked up from my shelter, My branch, and my home. Stoked by feathered-willows; flaming, To start life on my own. Miranda Batki-Braun
Image: Mà tè Ternyk
From the Artist to Viewer From Materiality to Immateriality From Canvas to Pixel Ruxandra Blaga Image - Andrei Tudoran
Question #1: What is painting? Definition #1: “the execution of forms and shapes on a surface by means of pigment.” Definition #2: “the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Image: Andrei Tudoran
Image - Andrei Tudoran
Question #2: Is the image above a painting?
If we stand by the first two definitions, a painting is something you can see, touch and
move – it’s something physically there. I wonder – what happens when that singular, unique pigment through which ideas and emotions are expressed gets converted into a digital medium? Is it still a painting?
“What happens when that singular, unique pigment through which ideas and emotions are expressed gets converted into a digital medium? Is it still a painting?” The physical paint on canvas is, in our digital era, in a process of transition on different levels: transition in terms of its materiality – from pigment to pixel; of the environment it can be viewed in – crossing from the artist’s studio/museum/gallery to print – in which the painting becomes a commodity available in an endless amount of everyday objects; and more increasingly, the online medium as well as your own personal desktop, giving you the ability as a viewer to have unlimited access to the image. But the ability to multiplicate that unique painting within seconds, brings along inevitably the alteration of the original – depending on the properties of the digital medium in which it has been placed: resolution, lightning, brightness, contrast etc. Question is, once the painting gets converted into pixel, do you still recognise it as a painting, or do you acknowledge the fact that you are looking at a digital copy that doesn’t have anything in common with what a painting is? By having a digital copy, you deny the aspects that make the painting an artwork (a unique pigment on a support resulted from the artist’s own effort) in the first place.
Image - Andrei Tudoran
“The ability to multiplicate that unique painting within seconds, brings along inevitably the alteration of the original” Image - Andrei Tudoran
Image - Andrei Tudoran
“When we hit the like button, are we also interested in seeing the ‘real thing’ at the gallery, or are we satisfied with just seeing it online?”
So why do we prefer this digital display? How do we look at a Botticelli or a Rembrandt in the context of our desktop, on which a bunch of tabs are open and messages pop up while waiting for Skype to resolve its incessant connection problem? But never mind looking at famous old master’s art pieces – what about art made now, in contemporary life? Why the increase of so many art blogs, virtual galleries, even Facebook groups where artists display their work? Is it solely for advertising their work outside the gallery space or workshop, or is there something more? When we hit the like button, are we also interested in seeing the ‘real thing’ at the gallery, or are we satisfied with just seeing it online? By photographing the artwork, denying it’s physicality in relation to the space in which it is displayed, you begin to advertise something that can turn out completely different from what really stands in the artist’s workshop or in the gallery space.
Image - Andrei Tudoran
“You begin to advertise something that can turn out completely different from what really stands”
Images - Andrei Tudoran
Images - Andrei Tudoran
In Andrei Tudoran’s works, references to digital images are a form of artistic language that give us insight into his critical point of view regarding how painting are experienced today in our technological society. By drawing inspiration from world famous paintings and personas, he is recycling images using traditional oil paint – one of the most popular tools associated with painting for the last five hundred years – while placing them alongside 21st century iconography. His work challenges our contemporary visual culture thematically too; what is the fine line between beauty and grotesque, sensual and sexual, figurative and nonfigurative? Is there one? Should there be?
“How do we experience visual art nowadays, even right now through this article?” Interestingly enough, because each desktop is unique in terms of the colours of the display, resolution, luminosity, the visual image becomes unique in that medium. Thus, the painting shifts from the singularity of the original artist’s work to a unique digital copy that now belongs to us. The canvases become digitalised, shared, commented on, posted and, if visually recognisable – famous enough – end up on an endless variety of objects: from T-shirts and pens to enormous billboards and ads. The unique pigment on canvas gets converted into a commodity that starts to represent not only the original work itself but also stands for us as individuals promoting our own interests, needs, preferences: it becomes a part of us.
Images - George Semeniuc
On the other hand, George Semeniuc’s work explores the process of transition from the actual paint to what we perceive as a figurative image – this being a continuous process of interchange between the texture of the paint, surface and the viewer. Through thick brushstrokes, the painting has a sculptural quality, and once turned into a digital format becomes the opposite of what the paint on canvas is supposed to be. Thus, I wonder, can the digital medium annihilate this materiality? More so, can the status of the original painting be altered as a consequence? In other words, in the process of transition from pigment to pixel, are we also “killing” the artwork?
TO AN OLD BORN KING Jorel Chan i. DOLORES Aghast I scorn these corpses accursed in scarlet, their trembling eyes betray impassioned scenes: forsaken men surround to tease this nymphet; now aroused, her false delirium means that only pleasures, retched by viscous whips and wretched games, will soothe her shackled limbs; writhed in orgastic throes, her darker lips, waltz liquid sin into mere silenced screams. Decrying innocence lost, oblivions know not the virgin Babe, who shall lay waste to all their twisted forms; scorched they silently rot away as did the morning star after his fall. In all those bloodshot cataracts, I truly see the nymphomaniac lies in carnal me.
ii. ROBARTES “Let nothing go,” he hears her spirit croon into his moonlit ear; her borrowed whisper meanders back into the Styx. “Too soon. I won’t,” comes his reply as he holds closer her lonely mysteries to his pale autumnal heart. Now sighing deep, the lily scent of distant things sweeps past his face. Her subtle hands describe that this was never meant to be, for lovers lay enshrined in mortal death. Lingering a secret moment more, she sleeps within his rosy eyes; their world shall always remember beauty, forgotten before. As fated evanescence stills her last reprise, all earth and hell resound with Orphic cries.
iii. DANDELION Memory. The tender dandy-lion’s scheme – to soar with life bespoke for transient skies. Artifice. Dons the brilliant mask of dream. Repeats her love through his gold-hatted guise. Greed. Discerning the flaws of finer things, Trimalchio rues beneath the viridian glow. Derelict. Refusing what such lightness brings, the young-proud fool, abandoned, dies by vertigo. Garden. This buried body, shall he bloom? Since the day the Son of God was shot. Grave. Only weeds like her shall bloom. Daisies, who flee from death with careless thoughts. If hearts are drawn to distant stars above, then who will cease the ennui upon the earth?
iv. SEHNSUCHT Diving deep through ashen trees, ancient antlers graze a final living evergreen; the futile soil lays still beneath worn salient eyes considering now what rests between this present world and clairvoyant dreams. (Nothing in wildest reverie could ever render true a silken tapestry of ardent stars bequeathing lost eternal seas with lucid hues) At last, aged hearts are made unsated by heights of wintry mountains that all narrate abundant fields beyond – so now, with bated breath, depart! New loveliness shall await. Compelled by felt impermanence, this fragile life reveals primordial glories yet to arrive.
UNKNOWN Film/Theatre | Literature | Creative Writing | V. Art
Issue 5
SOLITUDE All Submissions Welcome
Image by Ruby Cheung
www.unknownmagazine.co.uk