common market

The only other quasi-precedential withdrawal from the European Union was in 1982 when after devolution and greater independence from metropolitan Denmark, Greenlanders held a plebiscite and by the same narrow margins (a fifty-two/forty-eight split) voted to leave.
The chief motivation to leave (a decision that suddenly reduced the landmass in the then fledgling European Community by about sixty percent) was the fishermen of Greenland being told how much they could catch and then sharing that quota with trawling powerhouses. Negotiations between København, Nuuk and Brussel took over three years, but the untried exit mechanism, Article 50 that came with the Treaty of Lisboa of 2007, was not yet in place and no things being equal in the parallels of recent times (in terms of complexity)—one can rest assured that the EU and the UK will reach a new, neighbourly deal in no time. Maybe this was one of those times that America tried to buy Greenland wholesale. I think it was around this time that the US Three and a half decades on, Greenland, wishing for greater leverage and protection to curb other manufacturing nations from flooding their domestic markets, is now contemplating returning to the EU.

morlocks and eloi

Geoff Manaugh’s always-brilliant BLDGBlog’s latest feature article treats us to some speculative but none too far-fetched spelunking beneath the island city-state of Singapore that’s outgrown its confines and could only expand in one direction. Not only does the reporting of the project, entitled Subterranean Singapore, showcase the technical and artistic side of the country’s underground ambitions, it also poses important sociological questions about what kind of societies such massive excavations might produce, with heaven and hell rather inverted and those left above ground, exposed to the elements perhaps at the mercy of those dwelling beneath.

photo-finish or vox-populi

It’s a little hard to wrap one’s head around what impact and further repercussions the outcome of the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union will have, as a framework for discharge needs to be crafted first for this separation to be in any sense amicable—countering arguments that the UK is instantly free from any obligation to the bloc of European nations, since even if they don’t want to be welcomed back into the fold with open arms, no one wants to spoil trade or travel relations—but it does illustrate how quickly that one half of a population can turn against another.
Although Britain has examined and relooked its relationship with and in the EU for over four decades now and sides had been fermented long ago, the escalation that might cascade to other polities and break-up the whole experiment did come rather abruptly, fueled in large part by social mediators. No one ought to be faulted for sharing his or her opinion and beyond guess-work, none of us can say whether this bodes fair or ill, but the referendum also illustrates I think the rationale behind representative democracies—even when at the pinnacle of that hierarchy, one finds monarchs or unelected eurocrats—who assume the responsibility to protect us (often falling short) from our own immediate wishes. Delayed or deferred gratification for the sake of the longer view may not be as appealing as whatever is trending at the moment, and politicians serve (supposedly) to manage those expectations and (supposedly) are culpable for the miscarriages of governance. Those who launch teapot-tempests, no matter what the result, are exculpable and there’s no one held to account in mob-rule to pick up the pieces if things fall apart. What do you think?  Will other members follow Britain’s lead?  Perhaps democracy in action delivers what the voters deserve. 

møbel

There’s a new film that could be described as a modern-day, Scandinavian retelling of Don Quixote called Kill Billy (DE)—a play on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
A frustrated purveyor of traditional home furnishing (solid, quality pieces that were to last forever) is forced out of business by a Swedish furniture and lifestyle giant—maker of the eponymous and ubiquitous billy shelving-system—and thus resolves to kidnap the company’s executive officer. Though the Swedish magnate could not be reached for comment, it appears the company’s reception of the film was a positive one as well—after all, they were frank enough to admit that we’d reached peak curtains.

ouroboros

A poor python at a reptile centre in Australia was captured on camera having managed to moult its scales (ecdysis) perfectly within itself and capturing itself in its own skin. The snake eventually freed itself, none the worse for the experience, and its moment of fame recalls the ancient symbol of the ouroboros (literally, serpent eating its own tail), interpreted as a primal force in both philosophy and later psychology, but maybe that is what these pursuits can lead to.

so dark the con of man

Though perhaps the more cynical readers will interpret this magnanimous gesture as some kind of karmic penance for either plagiarism or promoting a hoax as academics (or both), but we nonetheless thought that this news item was pretty keen: one popular author is commissioning the digitalisation of some of the rarest manuscripts on esoterica and early incunabula of holy scriptures in order to donate them to the on-line world, including the definitive authority on Hermetic wisdom. Check out the article from Quartz magazine to find out more about these precious documents and their historic context.

fesche may never happen

Though we don’t reside in the deepest heart of stereotypical Bavaria (wir sind Franke danke) and try not to employee too many regionalisms, I found that I had encountered beforehand every one of these words and phrases—with the exceptions of “pfiat di”—an abbreviation of “behüt dich Gott,” bye-bye from God be with thee, and fesch, meaning chic, appealing. I was not able to learn much more about the etymology of the Bavarian term (although it was a lyric in a song sung by Marlene Dietrich in 1930) but did make me think about fetch from Mean Girls, when one character is accused of trying to start a trend by making up slang. I wonder if fetch was not completely fabricated, after all. “Stop trying to make fetch happen; it’s not going to happen.” Check out the whole list from the Local, Germany’s English daily.

transposed and truncated

Seeing these reclaimed fragments of porcelain transformed into a line of “translated vases” by Korean artist Yee Sookyung struck me too as a contrast to the Japanese tradition called kintsugi (金継ぎ)—the golden repair, wherein prized pottery is not discarded but rather elevated like a reliquary and enshrined with precious joinery and whose battle-damage is highlighted as sound beautiful and proud. Yee drew her inspiration for this series, whose forms evoke to me the notion of ancient fetish figurines, from the practise of her native potters of tossing out the factory-seconds or pieces deemed otherwise imperfect. In a disposable world, even if one cannot tease out the æsthetic, one can reliably find at least the therapeutic and the venerating in bothering to mend something. One can find out more about the artist and both these traditions at Colossal.