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.
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.
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.
The novel Our Distance Became Water was published by ERIS/Columbia UP, 2024 #novel #fiction #water #city (link in bio). . . Illustration “And our distance became water” (2023) by the author. . . Fictive Dream, the online #litmag dedicated to the #shortstory. fictivedream@gmail.com
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.
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).
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 eris.press/Our-Distance-Became-Water (Link on profile too)
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 ;)
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!!
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 space-amongst us, a different country a different season, we hold on to it like a dove in prestidigitating hands, no right to it just nestling it gently.
That word you said, how round it stayed, despite mouths and lips, ears and air, fears and forests. Maybe because in its bubble, the world formed like blood.
Bridges that don’t bridge, never wished to bridge, never claimed the other bank, never turned their back to where they started from. Bridges that don’t bridge are the bridges that really link us.
This night is like every other night: the world closes its eyes, then time visits its dreams, and we wake up every morning in a new world. This night is like every night except for one thing: the darkness is darker, the dreams are deeper, and the world might feel just a little brighter when we wake up.
The day of the morning of the moment you woke up for the first time, you live it again every night when you wake up when you shouldn’t, but what gushed you out and what waited to mould you? And you want to become all the parallels of all the moments that could have made you otherwise, and sleep becomes dawn.
Neither light the moon you expected but your steps will still be guided, one two as if there’s nothing above, two one as if there’s no one on your side. But you’ll know and you’ll raise your hand and you’ll touch my face, the face of the moon you sleep with. And you’ll carry on walking.
Law & Theory Lab showcase at @regentstcinema An immersive experience of our Lab work by members of staff, PhDs and undergraduates. Thinking and performing the law otherwise.
What if you turn your back to the water. It seeps in the other side. The dream you had the other night when you rode on a flat desert. The wake you had the other night when you flew like a current. It’s all there and you pretend to only drink it.
Our Westminster Law & Theory Lab is having a showcase performance at Regent Street Cinema on Wed 13th of Dec, 4:30-6pm followed by drinks.
You are invited to 90 mins of a continuous performance where you will go deeper with our lawscape hypnosis; become a machine with our complete Law and the Senses UWP book series; explore spatial justice in Post-Apartheid South Africa; create your own breath NFT and exercise your right to breathe; get pagan with Druids at Stonehenge; go polyphonic with our feminist chorus on Roe v Wade case; listen to legal poetry; feel the love, feel the law; meet legal ghosts, and sound out rituals of trauma.
your layers are open, your boundaries soft, your walls of glass, your support gossamer, but here, otherwise than your centre, a universe that breeds thousandfold centres and thousandfold elsewheres, your embrace is always wounded marble
The geography of your signature, darts across tomorrow’s skies, oh I forgot to breathe, is this slow enough? must I learn how to reverse? yes, breathe and look up, something always drops, gently landing on your lap.
The memory of whales floating overhead us, what was this caress, the soft polyester blanket that made darkness a home, we brought in the sound of a flight landing, we landed on the belly of a city in a tin box.
This eye never opened. We waited. Then stories went round, that the eye could see us even when shut. But we still waited. We wanted to see ourselves seen.
The boy and his (legal) tools Pic by @__._.dg._.__ at Law as/and/of Performance at the Westminster Law & Theory Lab, after Lucy Finchett-Maddock and I performed a third layer of the Pendragon case, this time a slow choreography of legal intimacy.
Law as performance part 3 at The Westminster Law & Theory Lab, Friday 10/11/23. In this clip: 1. @anna__mcdonald_ and Anne-Marie Jacob Q&A 2. Me (Andreas) and Lucy Finchett-Maddock Rope Performance and Q&A commented by Harriet Samuels 3. @sea_._monster Secret Performance Lecture and Q&A commented by Yoriko Otomo 4. @ccareyyoung Presentation, Video extract and Q&A commented by @julielouisemarsh
Law as performance part 2 at The Westminster Law & Theory Lab, Friday 10/11/23. In this clip: 1. @anna__mcdonald_ and Anne-Marie Jacob Hand Performance with volunteers (@danaetheo10 @printz_katz Maria Aristodemou and unknown participant) commented by Harriet Samuels
Law as Performance part 1 at The Westminster Law & Theory Lab, Friday 10/11/23. In this clip: 1. Andreas presenting Julie Peters presenting her book Law as Performance (OUP 2022) 2. Lucy Reynolds Feminist Choir with Julia Chryssostalis and Harriet Samuels, commented by Me (but I forgot it!) 3. Thom Giddens Violent Performance lecture commented by Julie Peters and Q&A 4. @danaetheo10 Open Space Performance Lecture commented by @__._.dg._.__
A girl’s hair on the wind, the perfume after you leave, the last sound of the orchestra before the applause, l’heure bleue, your face just turned away: remember me but ah forget my fate.
Its reflection a path to the reflected. But not a straight line. We had to slide across the round of a planet that was breathing its slow nocturnal wheeze. This is the only way to reach the moon mother. Or you just come out and see it on the lake of your garden.
Turn your back to the sacrifice. Random Violence begets Random Violence begets Random Violence begets Holy texts and holy sacrifices Beget Randomness Begets Nothing.
When his skin extends and becomes like yours, soft, breathing, elastic, and you see yourself seeing yourself, and in the fold a layer of love (to oneself? to the other?) blossoms into iridescent peacocks.
We awarded unanimously the @nufftromso 2023 International Jury Best Film 🏆 to Bear by @morganefrund
Bear/Ours by Morgane Frund is a jewel of a film. It is a study on the strengths of vulnerability when faced with an all-permeating, powerful gaze. It starts as an academic final dissertation project for the director, who has for some time been fascinated by an amateur filmmaker’s work on wild beasts and especially bears. In the footage entrusted to her by the filmmaker, she discovers multiple takes of women in public, their bodies, faces and high heels fetishized by the male gaze of the camera, a bit like wild beasts in the jungle. The director feels unable to carry on with her initial project but in a magisterial twist, what was to be a documentary about a wild beast, the filmmaker turns into the gentlest, most instructive and open confrontation between them. These discussion scenes are interspersed with the original animal and female bodies footage. The editing is complex and multilayered, the commentary measured yet informative, the camera work unintrusive, allowing the drama between the two characters to unfold. The film is a pas-de-deux of the centrality of the gaze and ocularcentrism, male desire and how casually (even when unintentionally) imparts aggression and violence, the corresponding female trauma and vulnerability, the all-around shame and guilt, and even the colonial attitude towards nature and to which most things are being subsumed. What is particularly touching is the way both the Director and the filmmaker try to understand each other’s perspective. Yet what one admires the most is the strong personal and professional boundaries erected by Morgane Frund when confronted with the usual disclaimers of ‘well, these women were filmed like a thing of beauty, like you would film a flower’. Frund’s treatment of her subject matter and the person in front of her, is an example to us all about considerate yet strong boundary setting against the wrongs that have saturated our structures to the point of becoming undetectable.