< back to the Diary

25 August 2023

In preparation for tonights TINY INVESTIGATIONS meeting.

I have decided to test my ability to improvise!

I am writing some topics down and will ad-lib on each of them.

The subject is rather familiar though: ROOTS, the camp, what was done, how can it help us here, at the Charleston rhizome … which seems to still be one of the most active rhizomes of ROOTS.

  • A FIFTEEN MINUTE SLOT FOR EACH PARTICIPANT
    • much better than a 5 minute slot!
    • yet, what it does best is, for lack of time, to confirm yourself in your own ideas which should, however, from the start, be ready for a challenge, contextualization and updating!
  • ROOTS CAMP
    • emotional
    • active
    • no visual arts? Is this accurate?
  • QUESTON-RELAY
    • successful and well attended.
    • We even got some feedback: a bit too undirected. But seemingly only, because unfamiliar to rooters?
  • THE USE OF ‘RE’ IN WORDS, VERBS, SENTENCES
    • ‘re’ as in renaissance? Make America great again? My point is that we may have to come up with a grammar adapted to the reality of the moment: life is change. (Heraclitus?)
    • the Question-Relay process wants to avoid the ‘re’, by giving participants a chance to move the process in other, still untested, directions
  • THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ADMIN AND ARTISTS
    • actually, between admid – artists – excom
    • Angela in search of a ‘a container’, where to expose issues, vent anger, find innovative propositions.
  • THE CASE OF GABRIELA WIENER
    • HUACO PORTRAITS.

Huacas are sacred spaces where kings, religious characters are burried with ceramic objects of striking power. Precise portraits of real people? Huaco potraits . Wiener sees them as identity pictures belonging to the pre-columbian Moche culture.

From there she builds a whole pre-hispanic portrait of her ancesters, deconstructs the post-hispanic period and comes up with an amazingly clear and powerfully direct understanding of the present.

I found one of her other books translated in English: ‘UNDISCOVERED’, but I chose to buy her latest, translated in French ‘PORTRAITS HUACAS’.

Updates/ Comments/ Corrections/ Additions

Projects