Beauty will be convulsive, or it will not be.
André Breton, Nadja
Greece’s government has said the country is “turning a page” after Eurozone member states reached an agreement on the final elements of a plan to make its massive debt pile more manageable.
The government spokesman, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, hailed “a historic decision” that meant “the Greek people can smile again.”
The government in Athens will have to stick to austerity measures and reforms, including high budget surpluses, for more than 40 years. Adherence will be monitored quarterly.
Guardian, June 22, 2018
The latest video by the Carters, a.k.a. Beyoncé and Jay-Z, is a treat. Filmed in the Louvre, “Apesh-t” begins with close-ups of various old master paintings. A bell tolls atmospherically.
And then, out of nowhere, comes a moment of pure swagger.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z, sumptuously dressed, stare out diffidently, like a royal couple posing for a baroque marriage portrait. Behind them, out of focus, is the Mona Lisa. The gallery (which was once, of course, a royal palace) is otherwise empty.
Washington Post, June 19, 2018
The word in Greek letters on the back wall reads: “AESTHETICS.”
Aesthetic originated from late 18th century (in the sense ‘relating to perception by the senses’): from Greek aisthētikos, from aisthēta ‘perceptible things’, from aisthesthai ‘perceive.’ The sense ‘concerned with beauty’ was coined in German in the mid-18th century and adopted into English in the early 19th century, but its use was controversial until much later in the century.
grammar.com
45, Asomaton Str.
The residence with the caryatids in Kerameikos has been cherished like no other not only by the Athenians, but also by the city’s visitors … When the French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson visited Athens in the 50s, he “captured” two spry old ladies dressed in black, walking under the shadow of the lissome and proud silhouettes of the caryatids. The contrast of the black and white figures, of motion and stillness, of decay and eternal beauty, created a powerful picture, one of Bresson’s most representative.
Tina Kontogiannopoulo, Streets of Athens blog
The first version, that of 1926 I believe: a carefully drawn pipe, and underneath it (handwritten in a steady, painstaking, artificial script, a script from the convent, like that found heading the notebooks of schoolboys, or on a blackboard after an object lesson!), this note: “This is not a pipe.”
The other version—the last, I assume—can be found in Aube à l’Antipodes. The same pipe, same statement, same handwriting. But instead of being juxtaposed in a neutral, limitless, unspecified space, the text and the figure are set within a frame.
Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe
A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.
International Council of Museums
commentary
I shot these photos in Athens, Greece, in June 2016, where Yoke-Sum was co-organizing an EX SITU workshop on the theme Structures of Feelings: A Structure of Revenge. The signs of economic crisis were everywhere. Never have I seen a city so graffitied. I took hundreds of photographs of this street art, which was at once an index of social breakdown and an explosion of exuberant creativity—if you wanted to be poetic about it, you might call it a structure of revenge being born.
“The treachery of images” (7.5) is the official title of René Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” These images and texts were my contribution to the 2019 EX SITU exhibition (Un)Making Space out of Place, my first attempt in this genre.
Camera lucida 
Leave a comment