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2004.06.11 10:38
life imitates art?
Last night, some inversionary reenactments were unexpectedly received from a friend.
Nice double theater.
If memory itself is humanity's primal manifestation of reenactment, and ritual is humanity's second manifestation of reenactment, is theater like number three?
"So what's double theater?"
"That's mostly baroque."
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2004.06.11 11:59
no thanks for the memories
"By the morning of 11 June the police watch on the castle had been dissolved and most of the servants had drifted away. To those who remained Ludwig railed bitterly against his uncle and talked repeatedly of suicide. 'Tell Hoppe,' he said, 'that if he comes tomorrow to attend to my hair he will find my head in the Pöllat gorge. I hope that God will forgive me this step.'
Mournfully Ludwig wandered through the castle, up and down the stairways and even through the unfinished parts where gaps were spanned by makeshift bridges of boards. It filled him with sadness to think that he must bid farewell to this temple which he had planned and created so lovingly. He lingered in the great Singer's Hall with it's murals from Parzival, and took his leave of the six Holy Kings in the empty alcove of the Throne Room. He stood in the colonnade and looked for the last time at the magnificent sweeping view over the plain of the river Lech. Occasionally he took up a book to read, then put it down again. Towards the end of the day he drank a great deal."
Christopher McIntosh, The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria, p. 191.
So, did Ludwig commit murder and then suicide two days later?
"The old man [King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and an accomplished practitioner of reenactionary architecturism himself], in his turn, felt a bond with his grandson, reinforced by the fact that the boy's birth, at Nymphenburg on 25 August 1845, coincided with the exact date and hour of his own. It was this remarkable coincidence which had prompted him to request that the name Ludwig be added to those the child had already been given: Otto Friedrich Wilhelm. The date was in addition the day of St. Louis. So the boy became Ludwig."
-ibid., p. 9.
Ludwig is presently in the midst of making plans to visit St. Louis, Missouri 25 August 2004. He's all excited because Hannibal and Twain are going with him.
Ludwig II's godfather is Ludwig I, and Ludwig II's godfather's godfather is Louis XVI.
One of Otto's fondest 4th of July memories is seeing fireworks over the Mississippi River at Hannibal, Missouri in 1978.
"In 1239 Baldwin II, the Latin emperor at Constantinople, made St. Louis (in gratitude for his [Crusading] largesse to the Christians in Palestine and other parts of the East) a present of the Crown of Thorns, which was then in the hands of the Venetians as a pledge for a loan of money to Baldwin, which Louis had to discharge. He sent two Dominican friars to bring this treasure to France, and met it himself beyond Sens, attended by his whole court. To house it he pulled down his chapel of St. Nicholas and built the Sainte Chapelle, which is now empty of its relic."
--from 25 August in Butler's Lives of the Saints.
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2004.06.11 13:43
Winning or Losing?
I'm presently preparing a course on 'the history of terrorism in film'.
The first assignment is to watch The Driver's Seat (The best worst movie ever made??? It sure terrorized me!) and comment on the explosive terrorist incident just outside ancient Rome's Altar of Peace. Extra points if you also comment on Liz Taylor's "What time is it?" and Warhol's mumbling cimematic debut.
"This movie really puts the art in fart!"
2004.06.11 15:58
Re: is this terrorism?
I think terrorism is just going to get worse and worse, ie, more and more prevalent. As to art terrorism, maybe unisex toilet rooms in an art museum would be more terrorizing.
Has any artist every taken a picture of an art museum urinal with urine in it? Or how about a real elephant in an art museum taking a shit on a religious painting?
Doesn't Holy Terror entitle a 'tell all' book about Warhol?
The invention of 'du the du'.
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