freixenet

This overview of medieval European microstates (micronations can be equally idiosyncratic but with severely limited recognition) that came into being either through omission, neglect or force, with nearly half still in existence, struck us a fascinating material and urged us to learn more. One favourite that we had not heard of was the outpost Fraxinet, a stronghold founded and held by Muslim pirates (a press-gang) sailing from Andalusia (al-Andalus) in the vicinity of Saint-Tropez in the late ninth century.
The settlement expanded and was as much a centre of trade and commerce as a place of piracy, if not more, and peace was negotiated among other Frankish ruling families in the area. The uneasy peace held for an astonishing eighty years with the Andalusis bringing all sorts of innovations to the indigenous people, including medical skills, tar, ceramics and the tambourine, but Fraxinet finally ended with the Battle of Tourtour when a group of nobles from Provence dispatched with the raiders, worried that they would seize control of an important Alpine pass nearby, conveniently spurred to action at the ransoming of an influential abbot.

le chant du monde

Early-career comparisons to Pablo Picasso are to be forgiven as he and fellow artist Jean Lurçat were virtual Dopplegänger and perhaps the albeit unique and pioneering abstract paintings of the later French artist and near-contemporary were passed over as derivative with Lurçat never achieving the renown of his Spanish counterpart, but the comparison (though importantly a point of access) does detract from the artistic merit of Lurçat’s later works, executed through his rediscovery of the medium of the medieval tapestry (tapisserie), and adhering to the craft’s stylistic horizons as much as possible. Limiting the palette of colours the artist availed himself of made monumental projects possible and after experiencing the Apocalypse Tapestry—for its depiction of the Book of Revelations—that the duke of Anjou had commissioned his residence in Angers, Lurçat realised that the format allowed for the hallucinatory abandon that he expressed in his earlier period when first decommissioned from fighting in the war.
Though off the battlefield, Lurçat and the members of his salon, a workshop of talent to operate the traditional looms and create the panels under Lurçat’s direction, were resisting tyranny in a multiple year, therapeutic catharsis that became The Song of the World, an abstract, contemporary to be inverted version of the Apocalypse, over-turned through a collective effort, hung in another wing of the same palace that displays the original. Learn more about Jean Lurçat and his vision at Messy Nessy Chic at the link up top.

key frames

We enjoyed very much being introduced to the Madrid-extract currently based in Toronto named Pablo Lozano. Having matriculated with London’s Golden Wolf animation studio and worked for clients such as Disney, Adult Swim and a couple of prominent sports apparel companies, Lozano is now finding his fortunes as a free-agent and a free-lancer. A key frame, incidentally, in filmmaking or animation is a rendering that defines the start and end points of a smooth transition. Be sure to check out more of Lozano’s personal work and commissions at the link up top.

gobierno en el exilio

Having already expressed displeasure with the idea that fugitive Carles Puigedemont attempts to take office in absentia, Madrid is now declaring that it will reinstate direct rule on the autonomous community of Catalonia and is summoning his physical presence.
Since the dissolution of the county government during its independence referendum, president Puigedemont has sought political asylum in Belgium, escaping charges of sedition and embezzlement that have resulted in the confinement of nine members of the Catalan cabinet, and is virtually guaranteed to be arrested should he return. During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco that began with civil war in 1939 and lasted until the restoration of the constitutional monarchy in 1975, the succession of presidents of the Generalitat (the executive branch) was maintained abroad in France, Switzerland and México. There is of course no hint of equivalence in this comparison and we’re trying to better acquaint ourselves with this topic but paternalistic tendencies always carry the best of intentions.

universal constant or halt and catch fire

Researchers in Bilbao and Salamanca proffer a rather radical theory that tidily dispenses with the need—surely not without controversy—for invoking dark energy to explain our Cosmos and the accelerated rate of expansion of the Universe.
The speeding up of the motion or retreat is only apparent and it’s that time itself is slowly, slowly winding down. The accelerated expansion is illusionary as we’re not further away from our galactic neighbours but light is taking longer to reach us as time drags on. Not being able to get my head around the idea, I am not sure how it stands up to scrutiny but we’ve gone to great lengths before for the sake of keeping up appearances. I wonder how this idea might be independently verified. The clock started with the Big Bang but as that burst becomes more diffuse, time over æons is degrading into a physical dimension (like the three were familiar with) and the Universe will freeze and coalesce into a dimensionless point, presumably ready to start the cycle all over again.

belenismo

We thought that this matchbox Nativity scene designed by Pepe Cruz Novillo in 1968 for the company “Fósforos del Pirineo” was a strikingly cute ensemble. Novillo designed logos and icons for the post office, railways, political parties and the police forces in his native Spain as well as designs for peseta notes and is worth the effort to seek out, recognising how Novillo’s ubiquity and style lent the country a sort of corporate brand. The safety match company is still in business and served as a canvas and experimental format for artists for decades.

in vino veritas (in aqua sanitas)

As a follow-up to last year’s reprinting of a most sublimely surreal cookbook, the German publishing house TASCHEN will re-issue Salvador Dalí’s liberally illustrated field guide to wine grapes, viticulture and history, The Wines of Gala, which was last in print in 1978. The artist’s pairings were emotional driven and classified his wines based on how the contrasted or complimented his moods, with groupings like the Wines of Generosity and Wines of the Impossible.

estelada

Although some seventy percent of the voting populace in Catalunya were in favour of holding a referendum on the matter of its secession from the Kingdom of Spain, prior to the police brutality and voter-suppression that occurred at the ballot-stations in Barcelona, Girona and a few other locations (prominent places surely but hardly not blocking all of them), the people were split on the issue with only some forty percent unconditionally voting for independence.
Spain’s central government maintains it is illegal and unconstitutional for a constituent region to declare its autonomy—and it is the government’s right and arguably its responsibility to try to kept its soverign borders intact and cohesive, like those currently strategizing over what a Kurdish homeland might mean for Iraq and Turkey (or for that matter, what the experience might be for the first US state to remove itself from the Union) or how the creatures of Brexit’s court rallied around Catalunya’s right to self-determination, but its violent response to stop voting altogether reportedly translated to an incredible outcome of over ninety percent—perhaps that show of might smacked too much like the totalitarian regime of Francisco Franco that came to an end a scant four decades ago. What do you think? In the aftermath of the plebiscite and the violence that marred it, Catalunya’s leadership have since softened the rhetoric of an immediate withdrawal and amid all this chaos it’s impossible to predict how things will progress moving forward.

bizarre love triangle

The Spanish commercial photographer that took the image of a boyfriend with a wondering eye, as Super Punch informs, is surprised but unconcerned (so long as decorum is maintained) by how one of his staged stock photos has gone viral and is fodder for the meme-mill.  The prolific self-taught entrepreneur has used the same trio of models in most of his compositions taken over the past five years, stringing their affairs into one epic soap opera story-board.

black jack

Though always eager to be the centre of attention be it through palace intrigues or disgraceful provocation and the news that Trump dismissed his chief propagandist to return to the managing the media properties that helped create the landscape that made it possible for this regime to seize power became the dominant headline, Trump’s doltish antics ought not to cause us to be distracted from his awful reaction to the violence in Barcelona with an appeal to a patent and self-plagiarised falsehood.
Ironically, the public figure who just the day prior berated the press for speaking before they knew all the facts (unlike himself) related a crass story that he was already told was untrue. Instead of condolences and statements of solidarity, Trump offered that Europe should study Pershing, most likely—although restricted to one hundred and forty characters, one has to fill in the blanks sometimes, to the military commander’s nation-building exercise in the Philippines and his tough stance on terrorism with an apocryphal account of executing Islamic terrorist in a defiling manner and how the example set ended insurgency in the region. Who is feeding this troll?  Do not make this tragic moment and movement about you.  While this libellous, revisionist and frankly criminal fable is unlikely to do anything other than cause more inflammatory feelings, the injunction to study General “Black Jack” Pershing might be illuminating in terms of understanding what America’s foreign “policy” might become going forward with a return to imperial aspirations and what sort of messenging (through a restored Bannon) that might entail.

6x6

underground sundae: recreating the lost psychedelic commercial that Andy Warhol made in 1968 for a Manhattan family restaurant franchise

lad culture: Sir David Attenborough narrates a typical British night out

dumpster honey: revisiting a disturbing requiem for Nature in the Anthropocene epoch—and yes, it was the insecticides all along

chiaroscuro: stunning night time photographs of Japanese playground equipment

cubismo: Spanish street artist Belin produces hyper-realistic graffiti portraits that evoke Pablo Picasso’s elements of cubism and the surreal

alive, son of awake: a look at the tradition of fantasy and speculative fiction of the Muslin world that precedes European Romanticism by centuries

nature morte vivante

In response to an on-going paternity suit raised by a professional psychic, a judge ordered the exhumation of surrealist Salvador Dalí from beneath the stage of his hometown theatre and museum where his body is buried in Figueres, Catalonia.
Notwithstanding speculation whether Dalí in fact was disposed or capable of sexual relations by the fact he had no offspring inside his long marriage to his muse, Gaia, the tarot card reader is claiming that the eccentric artist had an affair with her mother whilst working as a chambermaid in the province of Girona. With no heir, Dalí donated his artwork and estate to the Kingdom of Spain but presumably, if fatherhood can be established, his daughter would have a claim on the artist’s legacy.

chemin de fer

Messy Nessy Chic captivates our attention with her latest scouting expedition returning with this incredible, extant railway hotel constructed in the 1920s called the Belvédère du Rayon Vert of the French town Cerbère close to the border with Spain.
The art deco gem that once boasted a breath-taking cinema, dining halls and a roof-top tennis court closed down in 1983 but can happily still be engaged on a weekly-basis for those willing to rough it self-catering or toured for an afternoon. Check out the source link above to peruse a gallery of photographs and for more details, including the telephone number to arrange a visit since—in the spirit of being a time-capsule, there’s no website to deliberate over.

cross-roads

Though I can’t say for certain that many hikers will cross our path, we discovered that our new home, remote and rather secluded as it is, lies just behind the intersection of two of the European Long Distance Routes (the nearest point of reference shared by both trails is the City of Coburg), marked and maintained hiking paths that follows ancient trade and pilgrimage routes. From north to south, one stretches from Lapland through Finland and Sweden through Germany and Austria to the Adriatic coast, and from west to east, the other spans from Spain following el Camino de Santiago (der Jakobsweg) through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic onto the shores of the Black Sea in Bulgaria. What an amazing journey to embark on and to think we are at if not the centre-point at least a nexus of sorts.

the rock or europa point

Residents of British territory of Gibraltar have doubtless seen more contentious times under the regime of Francisco Franco when the border was blockaded and trade suspended by a series of embargoes and transit was not normalised until 1985 and of course when it was captured as a naval base during the War of Spanish Succession in the early sixteenth century.
Having asserted their continued link to Great Britain on multiple occasions and no desire to rejoin Spain, the majority of Gibraltarians voted to remain part of the European Union. Though Madrid has given no indication of a change in policy or posture towards the exclave it claims as its own, the formal triggering of Article 50 is inspiring some rather baffling, hostile remarks from the metropolitan care-taker government, including the foreign minister arguing that Gibraltar is not for sale or subject to bargaining and comparisons to the conflict in the Falklands

operation rügen

Inviting listeners to draw their own parallels, Fresh Air host Terry Gross reprises her excellent and engaged interview with author Adam Hochschild from last year on the Spanish Civil War, which fraught with all other associations and its native horrors certainly was an evident that stands alone but also could be characterised as the opening volleys of World War II.
One aspect that was new to me was the realisation that the fields of Spain were the training grounds for Hitler’s machines of war, giving the Nazi armies time to perfect their juggernauts before deployment in their own adventures. Though Francisco Franco was grateful for assistance of Hitler and Mussolini, Spain was never fully accepted as part of the Axis powers—possibly because Franco was demanding too many concession and territory in France and England. Contravening the US policy of neutrality and statutes on exports, the CEO of one petroleum company in particular, Texaco, fuelled the fighting, throwing its support to the fascists and cutting off supplies to the Spanish Republicans. Not only was this corporate partisanship dangerous and without precedent, Texaco’s global network of installations acted as spies and provocateurs to ensure that the blockade on the rebellion remained unbroken. As further insult, the decisions and intent that enabled these opening salvos to be fired cast long, long shadows and is illustrative of what happens when Big Oil meddles in the affairs of statecraft.

chariots of the gods?

I enjoyed reading this brief travelogue from Atlas Obscura about the Gothic “new” cathedral of Salamanca, the old city declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with its rather anachronistic astronaut adorning its façade, which was added during a 1992 renovation that will surely present a puzzle for visitors of the distant future but is by no means a hoax—rather a contemporary signature of the masons doing the restoration work. This detail to discover and wonder about made me think of the Darth Vader grotesque that’s lurking high in the eaves of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

7x7

condominium: uninhabited islet switches sovereignty on a semi-annual basis

bright lights, big city: breath-taking nocturnal aerial photography from Vincent LaForet

bless this mess: encouraging, compassionate steps to take for better house-keeping

mid-west world: a small Iowa town is a draw for Chinese tourists wanting to experience the authentic American bread-basket, via the always brilliant Super Punch

cosmogram: an assortment of some of NASA’s best photographs of the past year, via the forever marvellous Nag on the Lake

brooding: long incubation periods may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs

bodensee: the international borders of Lake Constance mean different things to each nation that shares it

6x6

shadow-casting: projecting the shade created by New York City’s skyscrapers

buzz-kill: cosmic radiation may inhibit cannabinoid reception for astronauts

panopticon: Lithuanian studio produces a tapered mirror to be seen from all angles

ball-peen: a quick tour of the Hammer Museum of Haines, Alaska—conserving humanity’s oldest tool

geocentric: confound your geographic prejudices by looking at maps oriented differently

azotea ajardinada: Spain to put mobile gardens on the tops of buses and bus-shelters 

forty-winks o siestario

Demonstrated health benefits aside (provided that one’s work and life framework can support it), the Spanish government is considering labour-reforms that may curtail the tradition of the siesta. Interestingly, as ingrained as it seems in Spanish lifestyle and it is common-place across the Mediterranean as a way to avoid working through the hottest part of the day, the connotation of the prolonged afternoon nap with that country probably has more to do with advertised or perceived business-hours than cultural prevalence, the extended lunch and workday being formally instituted in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, when it was necessary for everyone to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet.
As there was little in the way of public transport, workers were granted a two or three hour break to make it to their second job and to work a full-shift, hours extended until late in the evening. The situation was exacerbated when Spain’s time zone was aligned with Berlin—out of solidarity with Nazi Germany though geographically much closer to London. As economic conditions gradually improved, this work-schedule took on the reputation of labourers being able to sneak home for a nice long and refreshing nap and worked until later in the night. The reality, however, sociologists believe is that the siesta-ideal is far from practical and is exacting too high a toll on workers and their families. The Spanish word for the concept of a power nap is siesta poderosa. In reality, few live close enough to their workplaces to consistently get away and take advantage of siesta-time and it causes havoc for your children and parents—rarely being able to settle down and turn in until after midnight. What do you think? Compared to counterparts in other European countries, Spaniards are just returning from lunch as others are getting ready to go home for the day, and for more and more something to be envious of. Alternatively, we could all institute a culture of napping and be a bit more flexible with what we think of as an honest day.