Picpoetry: unedited mobile photography and rapidly, almost automatic unedited poetic prose writing, ideally on the spot in order to capture the atmospherics of the specific time and space. I upload all my picpoetry on Instagram under the name picpoet – one of the oldest poets of Instagram combining visual and poetic prose. Picpoetry is a method I invented in 2009 in order to explore an ontology of presence without falling into the standard trappings of visual and textual phenomenology. There have been two waves of picpoetry. The first one, with about 600 picpoems, ended in July 2013 were all except for the very last picpoem were ceremoniously deleted for picpoet’s suicide. The second one, since 2014 and still ongoing, counts more than 1000 picpoems and can be found below and on Instagram.
PICPOETRY
A few captions from my performance Hydrojustice I : The Boat part of @fmazza76 superb event Beyond The Spectacle under the umbrella of @londonmigrationfilmfestival The performance is an evocation of Olaudah Equiano, one of the few Africans who was abducted from present time Nigeria, sold as slave to the plantations but then managed to gain his freedom and write an extraordinary autobiography about his life in slavery. Equiano lived only a few metres from the location of the performance. This fact, combined with references to the spatiality of a slave ship, the intensity of the conditions, the horror of profit over life, and other Hydrojustice considerations, were part of this emotionally and physically draining multimedia performance.
Narcissistic Lawscapes - some more pics by the visually perceptive @andisapey of my multimedia performance at Norwich University of the Arts, part of @ahra_2024 and @norwichuni_architecture with the invaluable assistance of @uncultivated.architecture and of course La grande @teresastoppani that made me work so hard to be finally liked.
This Friday 4-5pm at the Pavilion of the University of Westminster, I am performing Hydrojustice I: The Boat, a revisited version of a performance I gave some years ago at the Royal Cast Collection in Copenhagen invited then by @justinegronbaek This time, the performance is situated in the slave trade metropolis of London and more specifically in Fitzrovia, the home of Olaudah Equiano. It will feature a soundscape/singing by @nathan_julius_countertenor
This Friday 22nd of Nov, I have been kindly invited to give a keynote performance at @ahra_2024 Architectural Humanities Research Association organised by @teresastoppani @_parasight and @elliemisty at @norwichuni_architecture. The theme of the conference (but can we really talk about conference in this expansive and madly rich festival of practices and ideas?) is Body Matters. For my performance I return to my two fiction books about water, The Book of Water (eris.press/The-Book-of-Water) and Our Distance Became Water (eris.press/Our-Distance-Became-Water) published by ERIS in 2023 and 2024 respectively, to draw connections between the body of law and the body of water.
There never was an outside. All you did was decorate your inside with fields and open skies, hanging gardens and smells of waves. But then, a lightbulb will switch on and your illusion will become your dream.
Like fireworks on the other side of the planet, we see a slice of illuminated heavens, but only a slice, and we hope, we want to believe, that the other side is seen at the same time by our dreams, the people who never pick up when we run towards the beach that holds the lights. Because deep down we and the world remain platonic.
This year’s Venice Biennale was full of text. Manifestos, genealogies, broken words, text as installation, and so on. This can only mean one thing: that artists want to be understood, their political and ontological messages need to come across crystal clear, the urgency of the situation to be appreciated even by the casual viewer.
I stopped at the entrance.
Dress me in my best. Treat me as I need you: eternally promising to be as fleeting as the earth under your feet. Be who I need you: my breath my waste my waiting. Leave when I need you: of that distance you fill with perfume I have but dreams.
If you could, what would you choose? Be light, be air and let me fly in you, let me be held by you? Or be wood, be turf and let me lie down on you, let me hold you? If you could, would you choose at all?
He had no words. Just images. He lived in a chain of visuals linked up in a syntax of colours. He dreamt of landscapes as portraits and books of open swimming pools. His language was shapes. And then he heard a sound.
Sinking Islands carries on till the end of the month. I’ve exchanged one island (Venice) constantly under threat of water rising, for another (Britain) currently whipped by storms. There is a sense of aquatic continuum, the same water that lands on my face, the same water that licks the mosaics of San Marco.
The lovely thing about having a show so centrally in Venice is that friends, artists and curators just pop in on their way to the flooded piazza for a little taste of that ‘sinking’ feeling.
Sinking Islands IX: Flooded Venice, on old gondola oakwood pieces and murano pieces, gold leaf and oil paint, 2023.
Showing my art at Piazza San Marco has its own very peculiar challenges and perks. Perks include the extraordinary sunset I just came across when walking towards the gallery. Challenges, on the other hand, include the high water that comes almost unfailingly at dusk these days. The Piazza becomes inundated and the ways to the gallery become limited. I don’t feel like waddling through to check on things. How relevant that my exhibition is precisely about this and other Sinking Islands that little by little vanish under the waters.
A window on some old and new Sinking Islands work next to Piazza San Marco, Venice.
We all thought we knew. Something obvious something tangible. And the glass that shows nothing, the looking that fails. What is that surface that we wrap around us like a shawl on a chilly night, hoping that it reflects the world but in reality just hiding us from it?
Your dollhouses burn from within. Little fires of domestic desire consuming the sugarwalls of your safety, oh if only my inbreath could break all windows open, maybe then we could all flow and gather around the fire.
For all the days you spent separate, there is a breeze that unites all your parts all your histories.
The fall of the father. No pedestal left of course. From floor to floor, smiling inanely to the kindness of strangers. A pocket of fragility, broken clay spread on the dead grass; a fold of mortality, hold the mirror but narrower; a gift of the abject, frothy milk on your moustache. Oh and a short branch of honeysuckle that hasn’t flowered yet.
The air between the skins between the pores between the dreams between the sheets between the nights between the names between the futures.
Becoming rock and yet still breathing, inviting, resisting, departing. That’s my philosophy, he thought, and he lied down on the curve of the earth, his body extending across oceans, feeling the tickling of the continents moving underneath him.
Become tap become kitchen sink become glass become mirror become your own reflection become the plant that looks at himself before it becomes the plant become water and pour out of the tap become tap become
Thank you for what you said. Thank you for listening. Thank you for making the space. No, thank you for stepping into the space. Thank you for not echoing me. Thank you for not taking my words for granted. Thank you for holding the sentences. Thank you for letting them unfold in the evening breeze. Thank you for being a wave. No, thank you for being water.
And once your secret touches the light, your body will ache for the shadow so amply offered. But you must let it hold you up, buoyant prince of other breezes. You must learn how to levitate in the other side of the light.
Nothing to say. The palimpsest on the walls talks of a silence that floods your sentences. No, I am still interested. No, I really want to listen to you. But there is simply no time. I suggest we wrap the whispers around our shoulders and fix our eyes ahead.
We had stopped waiting, our knees melted, our minds dipped in crackdry stupor, and just then, the rain of charcoal stars finally fell on us, a song it was, upside down angels it was, an echo of the world without up there it was. And we were dissolved.
The rapporteur performing: a slow act of bonding through string and water at the Geographies of Law symposium in Münster at Käte Hamburger Kolleg.
What was the thing you said? I remember you repeated it too. It kept resonating in my mind, an echo across the narrow beds, a deed cast into the water, round the globe and back, it returned to me like a wave, no bottle just words. But the words are now gone and I only have the sense of wetness on my lips.
That door never shuts. And the water sits with us for tea while the evening fails to rise. What was this constant awakening, remember?, the never ending beginning that had us breathing in spasms of vorfreude, children whose mothers have gone to bed before them.
Protect me from the rain of those busy wet gods pouring down wrath and wrong, but turn that umbrella upside down so that it gathers the moisture to bathe into once I wake up.
You were lighting them one by one, wish or no wish, and the others waited till you finished your work to start singing. But you carried on perhaps for too long and the lighting took you perhaps too far, so far that the stage opened and became next day’s sky. And they still waited to sing.
The tempest. Or how to point at the weather and become elemental. Or how to insert yourself softly into the air. Or how to taste the globe. Or how to begin falling like rain.
While he was cooking, smells and love were coming out of the kitchen windows forming clouds of promise in the neighbourhood. This the flesh of the dinner party, he announced with a certain joyful hesitation. People started coming in, crossing the shallow waters with a large slurping gait. They knew that the dinner would be another success.
Remember when you played with cardboard cities, all hard edges hiding a home you never had but always made perfect, teacosy and puffed up sofa cushions? That city exists and you live in it, but now you know that you need to open the window and let the water surge in, drench your cardboard city into a flatness.
Posted @fictive.dream We’re delighted to be featuring “Our Distance Became Water”, an extract from the novel of the same name by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos @picpoet #writer #artist #academic.
May I accept your welcome, gentle weather that makes water of marble? May I accept your welcome, a storm raging so that the window becomes intransparent? Your nest flutters with the evening wind, jasmine and flutes ushering you on your back. I have already accepted.
It only lights once an evening, in that space between the departing back and the softness of the arriving step, a slipper or a walking stick touching hesitantly the stones, the gaze down so that the light always comes unexpected, a borrowed moon, a dying star.
Felt cute. I hereby promise I shall never delete, annul, or cancel it. Neither later nor ever. I solemnly embrace my narcissism and my pseudogioconda smirk in a random bathroom toilet because, oh you know, it’s Sunday and the breaths can be a bit more open.
Down and you run away, up and you swallow me whole, down and you only show your departing back not even a wave on your hair, up and you move in with me eating my walls and spitting my past. Or just sit here next to me, tenth step up eleventh down, the sun feels warm this afternoon.
On lapping gently, my hand my soul, I touch your moisture, my surface my reflection, and feel your wave, my other my other, lapping back.
Trace me that part of my body that fits like a jigsaw puzzle the sky that is yours. And lift me from the root of my slumber, get my whole afternoon trembling with a horizon of evening. And stay but don’t complete the picture. This is not our work. The table is large and many years long, and pieces will be flown away by the birds below.
She often walked on the horizon when no one was around. She was told not to go too close to the cliff edge but she couldn’t really explain to them that there was no edge. That she could always see the line extending from where her feet were stepping all the way to the deep water, just one straight path no ups or downs no falls or rises, as easy as placing one foot forward at the time. She had never reached the end of the line though. Always called back by her mother or sister who had lost sight of her and started calling her name.
And the waters above were separated from the waters below and the line between fluctuated, a tiny hiccup in the cosmic moment of creation, just enough to produce the first wave. And from that point onwards, all waters below try to reach up, and all waters above fall with delight down below.
The #australiapavilion with the work of #archiemoore won the golden Lion at #venicebiennale biennale. I was underwhelmed when I visited it despite being very interested in the concept. The space was flooded by a spectacular textuality (genealogy, legality, provenance) but the content remained entirely inaccessible. The text was either scribbled high up on the wall or on redacted documents behind a water moat. So it was a text not to be read: the signified (if one read the blurb) without the signifier (to paraphrase Barthes).
While this @labiennale is in many respects extraordinary, the German pavilion did it again with a chilling exploration of thresholds, boundaries between here and nowhere bridged by fragile bodies exposed to our gaze. A subtle choreography of claustrophobia. #thresholds #germanpavilion #caglailk #deutscherpavillon #biennale
There is vertigo when you lie horizontal: the direction always changes, the flatness is actually roundness, the length lasts a lifetime and then some. But it’s a vertigo your body recognises as its own, a spiralling of pores and whirlpools.
Mefistofele is having a naked shower during the prologue, The promise is delivered through heroin, Margherita is Muslim, Helene of Troy is a recital singer, and my broach is not Cartier. A night at La Fenice with @anna_sanachina_soprano_venezia @felicitymenadue and @itacaartstudio_monicamartin. First pic by @felicitymenadue
You will always wonder, is this the corridor?, you will never cease wondering even when your feet will be tangled in the green mane of your city and your gaze will be fixed in the shallows, is this the corridor I am looking for, you will always wonder, because amongst all the corridors of all the cities, you still think there is only one that will lead you home, and you will never cease wondering, even though you know you’ve walked countless corridors in countless cities and they have all led you home.
We found some pretty walls and became flowers. Or, when mum is in town, colours go wild.
This might be my favourite pic (as Ifor said, Prada wrap up) shot by @corruptnegatives of the finale of this year’s Westminster Law School Degree Show, the culmination of a year of hard work by students, colleagues and artists in residence.
glitches in the service of collective freedom
Reposted from @lawtheorylab Join us for this year’s Westminster Law School Degree Show! We are the only Law school globally with a final year Degree Show where all final year students produce an artefact reflecting on their encounter with law, justice and injustice. Personal, moving, often incredibly traumatic and therapeutic.
And it is launched! Thank you to all old and new friends for coming yesterday to usher Our Distance Became Water into the world :) we filled up Hatchard’s and apparently sold out on all copies. There will be more in store, signed in white-ink-on-dark-blue-page flourishings but until then you can get your copy at
REMINDER: All invited! I want a party! No need to RSVP, just show up.
Our Distance Became Water
In the rush of the evening, the doubles become one and the depths emerge onto the surface. Here we all are, flat and full of breath, waiting for the end of water.
My novel is OUT! And you’re invited to our Grand Launch on Wednesday 13th of March, 6-8pm, at Hatchard’s Piccadilly - only the oldest, chicest, cosiest bookshop in Britain patronised by the Royal family and republicans alike (like me ;)
We have no choice. Touch is all there is, yet touch hurls us forward, a mad sail across mad seas, a swerve and a turn, and just like that, we sink and sink; yet, just like that, scathed and drenched, we reach the edge of our horizon.
The soundscape was sung and composed by @nathan_julius_countertenor and accompanied the whole performance in various guises.
With thanks to volunteers for tying everyone up, snapping them to grid and feeding them berries; thanks also to Kathleen Heil for the pics.
The performance is part of the @londonmigrationfilmfestival and HOMELandS Westminster, part of the event “BEYOND THE SPECTACLE: exploring the Nexus of art, migration, and the law” organised by Federica Mazzara.
The event is sold out but I have a limited amount of extra places for the performance. Please DM if interested.
The connections are silent but hopefully making waves. Oh and there will be a lot of narcissism too (you know, narcissus looking into water and falling in love with his reflection - all metaphorical of course :) Stay tuned for some silly selfies live from the stage.
The article is free to download. Link on today’s story and on my profile.
In front of me, a fear of a god.
On my back, a fear of the world.
Which draught does my exhale feed?
Sinking Islands, solo show, F.R.O.M. space curated by @dorah_art , San Marco 1105A, San Marco Square behind Olivetti store. By appointment.
Sinking Islands, solo show, F.R.O.M. space curated by @dorah_art , San Marco 1105A, San Marco Square behind Olivetti store. By appointment.
All pix @patri.fiorenza
Installing is always a game that needs to take into consideration the surface on which the artwork stands, the light, the draughts. All venice is tilted but that sweet F.R.O.M. art space is basically floating! So things fall as soon as you place them, slide just when you think it worked. You need to be inventive and let go of preconceived ideas of what goes where.
That’s ok:)
Sinking Islands, solo show, F.R.O.M. space curated by @dorah_art , San Marco Square, behind Olivetti store. By appointment.
Sinking Waters, solo show, F.R.O.M. Space curated by @dorah_art , San Marco 1105A, just behind the Olivetti Store. By appointment.
Pass by to have a look at my sculptural work of Sinking Islands made of discarded gondola oak wood, discarded Murano pieces, gold leaf and oil paint.
Sinking Waters, solo show, F.R.O.M. Space curated by @dorah_art , San Marco 1105A, just behind the Olivetti Store. By appointment.
pix @henrik_wilkens98
The novel Our Distance Became Water was published by ERIS/Columbia UP, 2024 #novel #fiction #water #city (link in bio).
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Illustration “And our distance became water” (2023) by the author.
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Fictive Dream, the online #litmag dedicated to the #shortstory. fictivedream@gmail.com
I am currently writing a text report on the Venice biennale and I’m focusing on the uses of text which were many, varied and often disturbing. I might therefore change my mind while I think of the issues. But as it stands, the visual and aesthetic impact on me was insignificant (and dare I say, not just me: in this madly packed preopening, with the longest queues for every pavilion I’ve ever seen, the Australian pavilion had no queues whatsoever). (Signifiers without signifieds perhaps but hey)
Pic3 by @elias_alpha_2
This year the students created artefacts on their moment of encounter with the law or justice or injustice that made them realise their political responsibility as law students. We had paintings, installations, sculptures, photography, collages, videos, performances and above all we had vast emotions, strong political positions and some exceptional creativity. We have also had the privilege of showing the poetic film PROGRESS (1968) on racism and the windrush generation directed by our alumna and now artist and filmmaker @adacotton together with @de_archive and coproduced with @africanstreetstyle
Thanks to this year’s @lawtheorylab artists in residence @jules.rochielle @danaetheo10 @__b.13.r__ @marsoriviere and Yue Ang. Huge thanks also to the dream team @jchryssostalis @__._.dg._.__ Anna Chronopoulou and Uche Ani, as well as @waltzandwendt and the sweet volunteers facilitated by @marloesspreeuw for installing in a battle against time!
Huge thanks to @westminster.law.school for all the love and support and of course to the @uniwestminster for providing the freedom and space to bring art and law together at Ambika P3.
Already planning 2025!
@lalou_zone meditative political project of dialogue beyond the machine.
This Thursday 21st of March at Ambika P3, Marylebone Building, University of Westminster, from 4 till 7pm.
Ceremonies and Film Show by our alumna turned ethnomusicologist, artist and filmmaker @adacotton will commence at around 5pm. We will also have a special iftar moment at around 6:15.
Let @op27ewaart know if you’d like to attend so we add you to the list.
#westminsterlawschool #universityofwestminster #law #art #lawandtheory #exhibition #london #marylebone
eris.press/Our-Distance-Became-Water
(Link on profile too)
Pics by @elias_alpha_2
Top floor, Hatchard’s Piccadilly, this Wed 6pm with David Cunningham, Polly Gould and me launching this most floatable of books.
Our Distance Became Water, Eris 2024.
Preorder at
eris.press/Our-Distance-Became-Water
The Book Launch with Polly Gould
& David Cunningham
Wed 13th March, 6pm
Hatchard’s Piccadilly
No RSVP necessary
I will be reading from the book and discussing it with David Cunningham, Professor of English and Editor of Radical Philosophy, and Polly Gould, Artist, Author and Lecturer at Bartlett School of Architecture UCL
OUR DISTANCE BECAME WATER “A visual, philosophical novel about a world filled with water. An arresting vision of the wages of ecological disaster, Our Distance Became Water is at once lyrical, moving, and psychologically acute. Endlessly inventive in both its style and its substance, this is a singularly powerful literary response to environmental change.”
No need to RSVP - just put it in your calendar and bring friends too! I want a PARTYYYYY!!
More info at andreaspm.com