figgy-pudding: a blithe review of the finest, right-proper Christmas carols
Icelandic artist and activity รlafur Eliasson working with geologist Minik Rosing have salvaged tonnes of icy obelisks, already doomed to their consummation, from the breaking front of Greenland’s glacial ice sheet and transported to them to central Paris, where delegates attending the crucial COP21 climate conference can witness them melt.
This is a pretty powerful statement and it’s highly recommended you visit the link and see more of Eliasson’s projects, but none to my mind was as stirring as the subdued Paris en Marche, when after the public rally was cancelled due to heightened security concerns and gatherings were banned, thousands brought pair by pair shoes to stand in for the absented protesters.
As if the Hofburg was not palatial and accommodating enough, the imperial dynasty of the Hapsburgs also had a summer residence, just on the outskirts—seemingly at least, buffered by the huge, ancient gardens and grounds that include a menagerie of statuary and fountains, a hedge labyrinth and some architectural follies like artificial Roman ruins—and overlooking the city.
This baroque household boasts over fourteen hundred rooms and is crowned from a considerable distance by a structure known as the Gloriette a top a high hill.
The slope where the pavilion (the term means little room in Old French) stands offers an amazing, encompassing view of Vienna below was originally planned as the site of the palace, and was erected as a monument to serve as a focal point, a setting for dining al fresco, and as a dedication to a Just War (jus bellum iustum)—the worthy conflict goes unnamed (possible to honour all righteous indignation) but probably referred to Empress Maria Theresa’s own handiwork that allowed her to retain her power:
the War of the Austrian Succession, a global conflict that broke out on unexpected fronts, precipitating the French and Indian Wars in North America, Prussia and English-Bavaria, Russia and proxy-wars in the Far East.
A top the Neptune Fountain, the Gloriette was constructed from left over materials that went into building the artificial ruin and originally cannibalised from the defensive compound, Schloss Neugebรคude, by then already suffering from neglect and disrepair and modelled after and constructed on the site where the Ottoman armies of Suleiman the Magnificent encamped during the first Siege of Vienna.
True to their founding principles, the group, harking back to a formative time in 1970 in Dรผsseldorf when the genre of electronic was theirs to define, the ensemble gave a dazzling and unforgettable performance whose message is yet resonant throughout the decades—especially poignant considering how the whole audience, despite, in spite and rather because of their seniority were also viewing ad preserving the concert on their mobile devices. Their now signature use of the minimoog and the vocoder for synthesized voices on their 1975 album Autobahn cemented their international reputation and to English-speakers, the title song—progressing out of the experimental and desparaging label of “Krautrock,” fahren, fahren, fahren was a misunderstood lyric.
There was a significant pause while the stage-hands put out the iconic figures, during which I entertained for a moment the idea that the band might have invited the talented elementary school class in nearby Darmstadt that made their own version of Wir sind die Roboter to appear with them but I knew it was already well past their bedtimes.
