By the Sleepy Lagoon

Lake Huron

[Photo by KPA]

 

Eric Coates

By the Sleepy Lagoon

Lakeshore Flowers

Lakeshore Flowers

Video by KPA

What is Agenda 21

[Via The Thinking Housewife]

መልካም ፋሲካ - Happy Easter

Easter in Lalibela

Lalibela's greatest achievement undoubtedly lies in the eleven monolithic churches he constructed in his new capital city.

The cultural and religious hub, which bears his name to this day, is modeled after Jerusalem.

In a vision, King Lalibela saw that he was to build a new Jerusalem after the old Jerusalem was besieged by Saladin in 1187.

The new city was to be located at the site of the present-day town of Lalibela and to be made the Zagwe dynasty's new capital.

It is said that King Lalibela built ten of the churches, and his wife built the eleventh one in his honor.

A pious man and lifelong devotee of the church, he was made a saint by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church after his death. [Source]

COVID: The Unanswered Questions

Via The Thinking Housewife: 

COVID: The Unanswered Questions

  – Where the flu went in 2020
– Why the global death count didn’t change in 2020
– Why Covid didn’t wipe out the homeless population
– Why billions of healthy people were quarantined for the first time in history
– Why Covid avoided Africa
– Why Covid avoided places that didn’t lockdown
– Why a piece of fruit and a goat tested positive
– Why the majority of positive cases at the beginning of the pandemic were people who hadn’t left their homes
– Why Covid was the first virus in history where the majority of people who supposedly had it were “asymptomatic”
– Why lockdowns did NOTHING to slow the spread
– Why the vaccines did NOTHING to slow the spread
– Why we’ve seen an 1,100% spike in myocarditis in children
– Why football stadiums were filled with maskless people while our children were muzzled in the classroom
– Why the violent riots of 2020 weren’t “super spreader events”
– Why the MSM doesn’t cover the millions of adverse reactions and tens of thousands of deaths reported to VAERS
– WHY “CONSPIRACY THEORISTS” WERE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING AND YOU STILL REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE IT

Buchi: Covered With the Hazy Shadow of "Inclusivity"

La Cote Aux Fees

Two responsible-looking (immigrant) security guards, Ammar Abdulkareem Khalef and Daniel Nkubu, patrolling the village Faverge, in Buchi's film L'Ilot

I continue to research on the background of Tizian Buchi (the Grand Prix prize recipient for his film L'Ilot at the Visions du Reel film festival in Switzerland, the same place where Beshir won her $20,000 Grand Jury prize last year for Faya Dayi).

Beshir, as I write in the previous post, is now a member of the jury that chose to award Buchi's L'Ilot with the Grand Prix prize this year. 

Here is a French (Swiss?) site which attempt lists Buchi's 2015 film La Saison du Silence (The Sound of Winter) about a remote hilltop Swiss village, La Cote-aux-Fees - The Hill of Fairies. Not surprising that Buchi gravitated there, and filmed swaying trees and undecipherable sounds.  

Max is a farmer from the Jura Mountains. He lives on an isolated farm in a village called La Côte-aux-Fées, literally “The Hill of Fairies”. It’s winter, time stretches out and opens a window on imagination. [Source]

Here is what Tenk, the site which promoted (listed) Buchi's film on The Hill of Fairies says: 

La programmation de Tënk repose sur la participation et l'implication d’une vingtaine de programmateur·rices issu·es du réseau de professionnel·les du documentaire d’auteur·rice, de Lussas ou d'ailleurs. Ces passionné·es, pour la plupart organisé·es en binômes, parcourent les festivals et leurs filmothèques personnelles pour proposer à Tënk les films qui les ont marqué·es. Ainsi se construit la programmation de Tënk.

English version:

Tënk’s programming relies on the participation and involvement of around twenty programmers from the network of auteur documentary professionals from Lussas or elsewhere. These enthusiasts, mostly working in pairs, scour film festivals and their own personal film collections to suggest films that have made a big impression on them. This is how the ranges that make up Tënk’s programming are constructed one by one. 

The French language, with its masculine/feminine noun and verb conjugations, requires each word follow that rule. Words, though, can take on a "masculine" form, for generalized understanding.

Otherwise, we get into the fascinating intricacies of how to include both masculine AND feminine forms. 

For example, here is the first sentence of the above, French statement, I've highlighted the industrious and diligent editors' attempt to be "inclusive." I use red where necessary to differentiate between words:

La programmation de Tënk repose sur la participation et l'implication d’une vingtaine de programmateur·rices issu·es du réseau de professionnel·les du documentaire d’auteur·rice, de Lussas ou d'ailleurs. 

Imagine writing like that - "une vingtaine de programmateur·rices...." - ad infinitum? How about speaking? LOL!

No wonder people cannot create anything of substance. Everything is covered with the hazy shadow of "inclusivity." 

And here is (mad) Max from Buchi's 2015 film The Sound of Winter (La Saison du Silence in French):

...the everyday life of the gnarled old Max

And the Whispering Forests of (Mad) Max's Mountain Village The Hill of Fairies

[Image source]

(Mad) Max, the bearded white, old, man, looks up to the murmuring forest fairies for answers. 

Ammar Abdulkareem Khalef and Daniel Nkubu, the two immigrant policemen in The Sound of Winter, are grounded on the earth (in the hills), ignoring the gusty winds.

Who do you trust?

Update: Beshir as Film Jury Comes Full Circle - And My Beshir Predictions

Jessica Beshir, whose film Faya Dayi won awards at obscure film festivals, but which failed to nail an Oscar, is now sitting in a jury, returning to the festival which gave her $20,000 for Faya Dayi.

One of the elements I wrote about this film was this:

...her film is about an alien, non-Catholic, spirituality...

And not only an alien, non-Catholic, spirituality, but an evocative one, of one "going to the other side,"... This is nothing about God, and the spirituality from God, but an evocation, a summoning, of other spirits. Beshir herself has admitted in interviews that the "songs" in Faya Dayi, the chants, were a type of evocation of spirits.

 

And Beshir combines this alien spirituality, this evocations of spirits "from the other side," with a radical political message of liberation, and even secession, for "social justice" of "oppressed" minority groups in Ethiopia, specifically the Oromo people of southern Ethiopia from where her immigrant-to-Mexico medical doctor father Hussein Beshir hails.

Well, Beshir has found her match. 

Tizian Buchi is the 2022 winner of the Visions du Reel Grand Prix prize (the film festival where Beshir won the Grand Jury prize, and her $20,000 prize money last year). 

Buchi's biography reads:

Born in 1981 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Tizian Büchi graduated in History and Aesthetics of Cinema from the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and in directing from Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD) in Belgium. He worked as programmer for various Swiss festivals and in film distribution. 

The Swiss Films website/Facebook page says this:

Congratulations! LIKE AN ISLAND written and directed by Tizian Buchi is the first Swiss film to win the Grand Prix of Visions du Réel du Réel since 2013. The feature-length debut, set in Lausanne, convinced the jury as a "brilliant observation that translates the coordinates of geographical spaces into universal dimensions".

There is nothing more on Tizian in google searches, but his twitter profile shows this:

Buchi's is described as coming from Lausanne, Switzerland. His last name Buchi appears, in google searches, be a European name (Swiss/Germanic/French), and his first name Tizian, a variation on the name Italian name Titian, and also the name of the renowned Italian painter Titian (Tiziano Vecellio).

But Tizian Buchi's features belie a Middle-Eastern/Arab connection, indicating the long, sustained, "immigration" from North African and surrounding areas - Turkey, and the Middle East. Or perhaps he is Jewish.

Here is a synopsis of his film, presented at the Visions du Réel film festival, in Nyon, Switzerland:

A small urban island becomes the metaphor of contemporary Europe and lends itself to a deep reflection about the absurdity of borders, rules, fences and barriers. A brilliant observation, a surprising wondering, that rewrites the coordinates of geographical spaces in universal terms,” said the jury, composed of filmmaker Jessica Beshir [KPA: my emphasis], the winner of last year’s Grand Prix, Beatrice Fiorentino, general delegate of the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, and Jovan Marjanović, director of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

So, there it is, the Beshir connection.

Beshir's themes of migration/immigration, ethnicity, alienation, and ultimately a spirit-infused, alternate reality is exactly what Buchi films.

"Tizian Buchi Blends Reality and Magic in His Portrait of a Neighborhood 'Like and Island'" is the title at the film review online magazine, Variety.

Says Buchi: “I love to distill little touches of fiction into a film, to create a dialogue between what is real and what is not. I like it when things are mixed up and we don’t know exactly what is what.”

But why, why disorient the audience? Why disorient us?

As I wrote in one of my posts on Beshir, where I posted my letter to Ryerson University's media faculty (Ryerson is where obtained my photography and film training):

One of my most visceral reactions to "Experimental Film," which I studied in Ryerson, is that I felt a sense of "bewitchment" of being transported away from myself, of being under a spell.

I think Beshir uses these experimental film techniques to arrive at her "bewitchment" of the audience, in order to pull them into her film, to transport them to this "merkhanna" or the high induced by khat, which becomes a spiritual high, and for the audience to enter this realm of her film - a cinematic high. 

I have written an article, in defiance of Beshir's "merkhanna" spell, a defiance which I gained after watching scores of beautiful, bewitching, flickering images of the experimental films. I wouldn't have been able to write this article without my film education in Ryerson.

But Beshir has a bigger agenda of splitting Ethiopia apart, inducing young Oromo men to war, and supporting a very concrete secessionist movement in Ethiopia. People are malleable, and easily manipulated through the merkhanna of film. The majority of viewers are from Western countries, and her film was screened mostly in Europe and North America, where the understandable lack of knowledge of the viewers makes them susceptible to Beshir's manipulations, where they can influence international, and foreign, affairs related to Ethiopia. Ethiopians are slowly denouncing this film, its "drug" focus, and its political agendas. The majority of Ethiopians, the Oromo included, do not support any form of secession.

But beyond the bewitchment of the audience, Beshir, and Buchi manipulate the under-the-radar, murmuring spirits of their environments, rich in non-Christian, non-traditional (a plethora of immigrants in Buchi's case, and the Muslim/pagan Oromo separated by design both by the Oromo themselves and the rulers of various Ethiopian imperial and governmental regimes in Beshir's film).

And both latch on to these "alienated" peoples, these "migrants" these "displaced" peoples in various forms, including the white/dominant culture and population which is numbed into acquiescence. And with this, they try to drag us down to back earth. Spirits guide the films, but social justice and oppression are simply the earthly concerns. Both Beshir and Buchi stand on shaky ground with their spiritual evocations. Still, "social justice" and "oppression" are more palatable than flying witches, and hence the camouflage they use to submerge their films with floating spirits.

Ultimately, Buchi's and Beshir's films are about a parallel universe of hazy spirits, brought on by khat, in Beshir's film (the chewable mild-narcotic/hallucinogenic leaf from the southern Ethiopia region of Oromo), and the isolated lives of Buchi's protagonists, in their mountainous, forest town, where nature itself becomes their narcotic, seeping creatures into their godless realm through the whispering forest branches. 

Next project - I predict: Buchi and Beshir will team up. This time, in Europe/America/The Evil West, to "discover" a whole new realm of wondering spirits, in the social justice bereft, oppression filled world of post-immigrant America/Canada/Europe.

La Saison du Silence (The Winter of Silence)

VDare's Obsession With Christian Ethiopia

America's savior, British immigrant, Peter Brimelow

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I always tell people that I have some below-the-radar effect on people. That is how truth works these days, isn't it?

Here are those folks from VDare, who profess to represent Western society, without God, who put up an Easter post, without Christ.

AND. They mention Ethiopia. And this is not the first time. LOL. 

Here is the start of their post: 

In 1984, to raise money for famine-stricken Ethiopia, Bob Geldof penned a catchy song called "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

In fact they did—Ethiopians have been Christians since the fourth century, before my own Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

But this Eastertide, looking at the children of America, we have to ask "Do they know it's Easter?"

Here are some facts:

The 1984 (political and ideological induced) famine in Ethiopia, that "commissioned" Bob Geldof to produce his song, made millions of dollars, as its proceeds never reached those destitute people caught in the cross-fires of war and ideological turmoil, but rather went straight to the coffers of the soon-to-be Communist leaders, and made Geldof, who would have remained (and remains) a mediocre pop star, temporarily famous, and rich.

This disjointed "Easter" - bunny - post talks about Christmas in Ethiopia. LOL. "Don't they know it's Easter in Ethiopia (next week)?" That's less catchy, isn't it.

It is easier to celebrate Christmas, which is about birth, and baby Jesus. But Easter? Crucifixion? For our Sins? That is hard core! And the VDare people just can't handle that.

That is the fate of "white" Americans, who have forfeited God for their own godhead. 

And isn't Vdare all about "against immigration" and "against multiculturalism?" So why Ethiopia now? Hilarious.

Easter bunnies are cute, don't get me wrong. I like all the pre-Christian analogies which have somehow got incorporated in the Easter festivities. But bunnies ain't about Christ. First know your religion, is what I say, then bring in the gimmicks, and the fun.

The proper article title should have been: "They know it is Easter in Ethiopia,"because they do, Ethiopians know, it is Easter soon.

The VDare, folks, in their usual a-Christian obfuscations, channeled an ancient Christian country, thousand of miles away, to condemn the banned, yes, the BANNED!, Easter Egg hunts!

Who the hell cares about the "Easter Bunny," to paraphrase the VDare literati.

These same VDare folk make a big fuss about the Christmas tree (banned, again, wouldn't you know), while ignoring (or not giving it a recognition superior to that fateful tree) the birth of Christ, and other beautiful still present visual depiction in public squares, like the Creche.

LOL, all over again.

Here is the VDare post, and yes, they use the word "hell" in wishing us, well, "A Happy Easter":

HAPPY EASTER FROM VDARE.com! And To Hell With The "Spring Bunny"!

 

In 1984, to raise money for famine-stricken Ethiopia, Bob Geldof penned a catchy song called "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

In fact they did—Ethiopians have been Christians since the fourth century, before my own Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

But this Eastertide, looking at the children of America, we have to ask "Do they know it's Easter?"

Apparently the concept of  Easter is so potentially offensive to the Christophobic, that the children of America can't even have Easter Egg hunts, and have to be taken to see, not the Easter Bunny, but the "Spring Bunny."

By the way, nowhere, nowhere, does VDare wish its loyal readers, who foot the bill to mainstay their fort on the Connecticut hills, a heartfelt Happy Easter. The best they can do, bunnies aside, is the bleak, darkened image of giant pagan crosses lit up on some dismal city skyline, which heads another dismal post on...immigration. 

And the head honcho, Peter Brimelow, tweets all about this bunny, but nothing about Easter, as in Happy Easter. But, he goes one step further, hopping past that perky bunny. As his Easter Contribution, he posted on two "obscure" saints (by his definition), and wishes everyone a (not) happy Good Friday. Nothing about Jesus. He then garbles something about Passover (maybe he remembered Christ's Jewish ancestors?), Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashannah (all Jewish for those not in the know) and some tongue in cheek best wishes via the MSM (Main Stream Media - VDare's favorite news source ) a Happy Passover etc. He does this tongue in cheek, but is he really? Fascinating.

Saint Geldof

Easter Lilies

Easter Lilies at the Allan Gardens Conservatory

[Photo by KPA] From my Camera Lucida post

A Happy Easter

Resurrection of Christ

Raphael, 1499–1502
Oil on wood panel

From a post I first made at my Reclaiming Beauty site, in 2015. I've used this same image for subsequent years.

The Music on Calvary

The Music on Calvary: 

“BUT the couching of our spiritual sight is not the only operation which the senses of our soul undergo on Calvary. All souls are hard of hearing with respect to the sounds of the invisible world. The inner ear is opened upon Calvary. The sounds of Jerusalem travel up to us through the darkness, and perhaps the sounds of labour in the gardens near. But they rise up as admonitions rather than as distractions. They come to us softly and indistinctly, and do not jar with the silence of our endurance, or the low whisperings of prayer. Least of all do they muffle the clearness of our Saviour’s words when He vouchsafes to speak. Down below, how the world deafened us by its tumultuous noises, and jaded our spirits with its multiplicity of sounds! We knew that Jesus was at our sides, and yet we could not converse with Him. It was like trying to listen, when the loud wheels are rattling harshly along the streets, when listening is no better than an unsuccessful strain, or a perplexed misunderstanding. The mere noise the world makes in its going so amazes us that it hinders our feet upon the road to heaven. It is only on Calvary that earth is subdued enough to make music with heaven; for it is there only that God is heard distinctly, while the low-lying world murmurs like a wind, a sound which is discordant nowhere, because it is rather the accompaniment of a sound than a sound itself.”

 

Frederick William Faver, D.D., The Foot of the Cross (or the Sorrows of Mary) (TAN Books, 1956 edition); p. 281

But God Still Lives

Here is a discussion at the View From the Right on April 20, 2011 on Nietzsche, and his killing off of God, which I also posted at my Camera Lucida blog.

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Prophet, 1912

Emil Nolde

 There is a timely discussion going on at the View From the Right (VFR). The topic on Rand and conservatism weaves through race, Athena and Zeus, Christianity, American Protestantism, the nature of individuality, heroes, the objective good, God, and ends with this comment by Lawrence Auster quoting Nietzsche's madman from The Gay Science:

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers....

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?... Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

 

Nietzsche's ambiguous, ambivalent relationship with the God he perceives as greater than anything he can conceive of, yet deigns to have him killed to supplant him, is surely part of our Easter story.

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Here is the entry at VFR:

In the entry on “Rand and conservatism,” I pointed out how Ayn Rand’s hero John Galt not only denies God but becomes himself a god; certainly he is treated as a god by the other characters and by the author. Then, in order to back up the idea that the murderers of God become gods themselves, I quoted Nietzsche:

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers….

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? … Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

At her Camera Lucida blog, Kidist Paulos Asrat quotes that passage and adds:

Nietzsche’s ambiguous, ambivalent relationship with the God he perceives as greater than anything he can conceive of, yet deigns to have him killed to supplant him, is surely part of our Easter story.

I like that. Just as Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, then rose into eternal life, the nihilistic modern world has (in its distorted imagination) killed and buried God. But God still lives.

My Mom and the Hydrangeas

Real Goods And Evils At Stake

... victory should never be pursued by unjust means. There are nonetheless real goods and evils at stake, so we cannot pretend to be above the fray, and whatever the reverses should remain confident that the gates of Hell will not prevail and never accept defeat.

 

 From James Kalb's article What is Culture War? 

Night School Printing

My screen-printed fabrics at my OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) night-school/continuing ed. program, showcasing my Spring Highrise series in the back and side.

Good Form: Remembering Designer, Architect, and Writer Christopher Alexander

Living Room, Berkeley California home - Christopher Alexander 

Below is a post I wrote on Christopher Alexander at my Camera Lucida blog in 2008 (slightly modified here). 

After part time courses in textile design (4 in total) at Ontario College of Art and Design, I gained sufficient knowledge that I continued my own investigations and research in textiles and design. I also took drawing and painting courses (including botanical painting). I did two works (among others) a couple of years after I left the OCAD program - my trillium and my dove rose designs. 

I was especially interested in architecture, reading books and articles on the subject. I found Alexander's books this way, including his Pattern Language, which was also the title of his website. I followed his postings, and was generally influenced by his "philosophy" of design.

I recently learned that Alexander died just this year, on March 17.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update on Good Shape: More Like "Good Form"

Here's a revealing comment by Christopher Alexander:

[F]orms must arise that come from the technology and economics and social circumstances of that era. So that if one sets out a program where you're essentially sort of copying old forms in any version, you're liable to be in a hell of a lot of trouble...But [people] don't know what to do about it...And I think that it is necessary to spend time - I would say major amounts of time - thinking only about form and geometry. Thinking about the language of form that is appropriate now.

This puts a lot of things into perspective, which I had only subconsciously understood until now.

Almost all of my colleagues, professors and acquaintances in the art and design fields seem to be stuck on this search for "the language of form that is appropriate now."

Hence:
- The name "experimental" for the avant-garde group of current filmmakers, of which I was a member for a few years. There was (is) great emphasis on finding new techniques, and even branching into non-film media such as digital and computerized manipulations. Thus calling themselves "experimental."

- A recent bizarre project by fellow board-member (at a post I had at Trinity Square Video) who uses jello to simulate water in a fountain. In trying to find a new way to design fountains, she tried to redesign the water instead!

- A textile "artist" who has been experimenting with the very ugly, thick - in all aspects - fiber felt to try and come up with sculptural elements. The problem is that felt is not solid, unless stuffed. Trying to find this intrinsic sculptural element in a non-sculptural material hinders the real emphasis. Which should be representing the object itself.

- Textile designer Looolo makes biodegradable, organic and toxin-free home accessories. The simple pillows range from a steep $100-$150. The price is for the dubious material. Design not included. Also, biodegradable fabric! Isn't the idea that it last as long as possible, and not get tossed in the green bin when a little worn? And aren't cotton, silk and wool naturally biodegradable?

What's going wrong here?

As film theorist Siegfried Kracauer quotes avant-garde filmmaker Jacques Brunius: "The cinema [of the avant-garde] is the least realistic of arts."

This holds true for the three examples I've given above. In the single-minded effort to find "the language of form that is appropriate now", these designers, artists and filmmakers have given up on reality!

It's as simple as that.

There is something noble in this experimental, almost scientific, attempt at finding the right form. But, I think where they are made their fundamental error is in their disengagement with reality. Form comes from the real world. Trying to find form without the real will only give us deflating sculptures and giant jello for water.

Left: Chung-Im Kim's undecipherable object (worm, horn, shell, ice cream cone?) made with sewn pieces of felt with a hollow inside. One clutch and the object is flattened

Kim's title for this object is "Cycas", which appears to be a cone or a pod for a palm plant. I wasn't far wrong with my attempt to understand this foreign object - horn/shell - cone/pod.

--------------------------

Right: Gwen MacGregor's "Blue." The wading water is made from jello as part of an "installation"project with wading pools. Even the project is misdirected, looking at the pools instead of the structures. The kids don't look too much like they're enjoying themselves.

----------------------------------------------------

Looolo pillows:
Left, "Fly" at $140; Center, "Janthur" at $190; Right, "Windows" at $140

The Fly and Janthur pillows defy leaning back on their irregular surface. Isn't that what pillows are for? And design is wanting in Windows.

Photo still from image gallery at Bruce Elder's website for his experimental film "The Young Prince"

 

[KPA: The film preview of The Young Prince on my original post is no longer available, and I have posted the above image instead]

Snowdrops

 

Snowdrops Under a Tree

[Photo by: KPA]

To a SnowdropBy William Wordsworth
Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!