101 contemporary artists and more...

contemporary artists andmore...

T h e i d e a o f C o l l e c t A r t c a m e t o l i g h t a t t h e e n d o f D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 , i n o r d e r t o s u p p o r t G e o r g i a n a n d i n t e r n a t i o n a l a r t i s t s d u r i n g t h e p a n d e m i c , h o w e v e r , t h e e x p e r i e n c e a c c u m u l a t e d o v e r t h e y e a r s a n d c u r r e n t p r o c e s s e s p u s h e d u s t o p l a y m o r e w i t h C o l l e c t A r t a n d g i v e i t d i f f e r e n t w o r k l o a d s . O n J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 2 0 , C o l l e c t A r t w a s l a u n c h e d i n t h e o n l i n e s p a c e a n d w e s t a r t e d t o r e a c h o u r g o a l . T h e o n l i n e s p a c e a l l o w e d u s t o q u i c k l y r e a c h t h e v o i c e o f t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l a r t i s t i c f i e l d . I n t h e a u t u m n o f t h e s a m e y e a r , w e s t a r t e d p u b l i s h i n g m a g a z i n e s , a n d a t t h e s a m e t i m e l a u n c h i n g o n l i n e e x h i b i t i o n s , t h e n u m b e r o f i n t e r e s t e d a r t i s t s h a s a l r e a d y e x c e e d e d 5 0 0 , f r o m 9 6 c o u n t r i e s o f t h e w o r l d . I n t o t a l , w e h a v e r e l e a s e d 1 6 i s s u e s o f s e a s o n a l m a g a z i n e s a n d s p e c i a l e d i t i o n s . D u r i n g 3 y e a r s , w e w e r e a b l e t o h e l p s e v e r a l s u c c e s s f u l a r t i s t s , s u c h a s N a t a B u a c h i d z e , S a l o m e K o b u l a s h v i l i , T a m r i k o M e l i k i s h v i l i , G e o r g e C h a u s h b a , a n d m a n y m o r e , w h o s e w o r k s w e r e e x h i b i t e d a t t h e P a r i s A r t W e e k , t h e V e n i c e B i e n n a l e , t h e N a t i o n a l M u s e u m o f M a d r i d a n d e t c . . . T h e p u r p o s e o f C o l l e c t A r t i s t o b u i l d a b r i d g e b e t w e e n G e o r g i a n a n d i n t e r n a t i o n a l c u l t u r a l e v e n t s a n d a r t i s t s , t o g i v e a c h a n c e o t h e r s t o t h i n k f r o m a d i f f e r e n t p e r s p e c t i v e , a n d t o m a k e a r t e v e n m o r e a c c e s s i b l e t o t h o s e i n t e r e s t e d i n t h e f i e l d o f c u l t u r e .

Nina Antonakes

Ela Vultur

Manuel de Sousa

Levan Kherkheulidze

Patrícia Abreu Birgit Schiemann Salome Jishkariani

Anne-Marie Glasheen

Vakho Khetaguri

Alexandr Agafonov Mariam Amurvelashvili

Romina Belda Vincenzo Cohen Nino Khundadze Zinka Barnovi Erika Zanelli

Sandro Murvanidze Dato Koridze

John Walmsley

Tamar Khelashvili

Guilherme Bergamini

Anna Safronova

Konrad Hellfeuer

James Mellor Allan Punton

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 84 86 87

Kobi Walsh Daniel Spehr Adam Czech Maria Myasnikova Sam Haynes Chichan Kwong Zaur Gamkrelidze Salome Kobulashvili Sam Sherborne Ian Bride Ilia Ramishvili

Jose Yumar Sarah Grace Dye Thomas González René Garza Cameron Lings Sam Heydt Caz Hildebrand Matthias Neumann Vazha Melikishvili Tanya Preminger Gillian Davenport Daisy Richardson Nugzar Manjaparashvili

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 110 111 112 113

Radoslav Rochallyi

Nata Buachidze

Love and beauty, purity and trust, exchanging feelings and even lives, with spontaneous, unpredictable consequences.

Wild AsparagusOil on canvas, 80x80cm, 2021

Krzysztof Tarnowski

Edina Soós

Vulnerable, Project 'Doubts'Mixed media on canvas, 80x60cm, 2020

Kristine Narvida

Tamriko Melikishvili

Michele Noble

Tamuna Melikishvili

Touch - Oil on canvas, 60x95cm, 2013

Walter Lee Allen III

Self-portraitOil on canvas, 61x46cm, 2019

Dato Abesadze

Road - Oil on canvas, 186.5x126cm, 2006

Levan Samnashvili

The Room - Acrylic on canvas, 50x70cm, 2022

Shekofteh Afrasiabi

Patrice

Fernando Coreia

Reading and sleep - Acrylic on polycarbonate, 30x40, 2020

Juan Canals

Paisaje con Seres - Mixed media on paper, 50x65, 2002

Andrew Smith

Salamanca - Oil on canvas, 105x127cm, 2021

Pol Barbero

Postmodern manDigital painting, 4096x4096px, 2022

Mode - Acrylic and mixed media on paper, 90x25cm, 2022

Maya Aomatsu

Dream of the SunOil on canvas, 170x140, 2022

Dimitra Bouritsa

Victoria Vimbert

Rikardo Druškić

FolieADeux - Acrylic on canvas, 150x160cm, 2020

Josh Hollingshead

Human Chain - Oil on canvas, 210x366cm, 2014

FERRÓ

Jim Kaufman - Acrylic on Figueras paper on foam board, 73x103cm, 2021 Painting

Maria Christou

Philip Westcott

Sunbathers Eccles - Digital print,20x30cm, 2019 Digital

Eloise Schoeman

JASACID

Improvisation

Dolores Mephistopheles

A glimpse of the Siren CharmsAcrylic on paper, 127x98cm, 2022

Tim Edgar

Cosmic Organism - Mixed media on Greyboard, 50x50cm, 2022

Erika Szentgyörgyi

View from our window IILino paint on paper, 30x21cm, 2020

Arai Fuzuki

Solar SystemAcrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 109x79cm, 2022

Ayan Aziz Mammadova

Secret of the colorsAcrylic on canvas, 120x100cm, 2012

Pete Clarke

downpourscaffolding - Oil & acrylic on canvas, 100x120cm, 2018

Maka Gotsiridze

One man's nonsense is another man's sense - Oil on canvas, 140x150cm, 2021

Michael Wagner

MetropolPrint on canvas, 80x80cm, 2021

Monique J DuFour

Miguel Sopena

Chris Holley

Beethoven miniatures - Oil and pigment on canvas, 30x30cm each, 2019

Marie Ruprecht

Water & Land

Acrylic & Indian in on old linen pieces, diameter 30cm, 2019 Nr.1 Nr.2 Nr.3

Lunyu Fu

Before You Call It a Tree

Mantoto is a silly little dog, With a big head and four short legs. Never jumps high or pees high. A wisp of wind could evaporate his urine, Before the big dogs come.

Mantoto needs a piece of urine which is earth-shattering! Which shows our favourite earth, grass, and spring. The line and the points were the original Mantoto provided to me, I know he was drawing a sprout, A sprout who wants to be a big tree. Just like the forever ancient shepherd puppy Mantoto, Always waiting to grow tall!

Before you call it a Tree - Print, 100x85mm each, 2021 to present

Colin Gillespie

Cities and mental health

In historically recent times people have increasingly migrated from rural areas to cities. They have done so because large gatherings of people in one place normally create better economic and social opportunities for all – this, in turn, can offer an improved quality of living. Many who move from rural to urban settings often leave behind their social networks of friends or family –this is the framework supporting a ‘sense of place’. Replacing this - in a city - can be difficult. Friendships can take time to establish – may be transitory –people move around or away – contacts are lost – and a ‘sense of place’ can become a shifting reality – uncertain and sometimes difficult to define. However – although it is certain that city living can contribute to positive ‘well-being’– it can, for some, have a negative impact. It is now generally accepted that cities are associated with higher rates of mental health problems than those evident in rural areas.

Cities normally have a central ‘heart’ or core – surrounded by suburban neighbourhoods that lead into outlying areas. These three parts often vary as regards density of population, physical presence, a wellplanned ‘infrastructure’ and availability of resources. The levels of overcrowding, noise and pollution may also vary within the three parts and have a differing impact on those living there. Cities provide stimuli – created by the movement of people, the ‘hustle & bustle’, noise and interaction – for most this can be an energising experience – for others, it sometimes can create ‘overload’ and a gradual inability to ‘cope’.

Such people may find ‘relief’ by seeking out private spaces in their neighbourhood or begin to accept a level of self-imposed social withdrawal that easily slips into some form of anxiety or depression.

I spent several years working in a Mental Recovery Centre - providing printmaking as a focal point of interest/involvement for the Centre users.'Living in a City' was often a topic of conversation and a majority held view - from their collective experience - was that ' the pace of life was too hectic' -' there was a lack of manners among people' - ' there was no sense of LOCAL people' - 'it was too congested, noisy 7 dirty' - 'there was no clean air to breathe' - there should be a control on numbers allowed into a city' - 'there were too many homeless people on the streets' - living in a city can dilute the brain and make you feel lost'.

The 'HEAD' prints came from my experience working at the Centre - the others reflect my sense of living in a city.

Brian Voce

A Song For a Nebula Risograph print, 59.4x42cm, 2017

Lita Doolan

Winter creates a crisp new silhouette with a jagged edge. Taking a walk past tree barks that reach up through the snow a mist circles. The clean shape-shifting power of the frost is transparent. The powerful white sparkles, held safe by the trees outline.

Monochrome tree Giclee print, 25x25cm, 2021

JaneMcKeating

An autobiographical work. The story of a woman examining the global origins of her wardrobe one morning whilst ill in bed. The piece documents, on scraps of her bedsheet, images that reflect on both the individual’s identity and imaginary connections made, through labeling, with the makers both known and unknown.

The Story

It was 7 am on a migraine day and she wasn’t up to much, so she idly began examining the labels on the contents of her wardrobe, listing them as she lay in bed.

She isn’t a clothes buyer; familiar, timeworn, outmoded, and charity shop purchases for the most part.

A revelation, why had she never scrutinized them before?

A container of ‘made ins’ from across the globe:

From countries visited, where she could imagine the makers, India, Cambodia, Thailand….

From countries more unfamiliar to her, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia….. and personal histories, sentimental items made by family, outliving the maker, igniting tactile grief. She speculated on the hands that had touched them, in the designing, weaving, knitting, printing, embroidering, and construction. The packaging, transport, and delivery. She reflects on both the global and more intimate connections and worries about environmental impact, working conditions, and her personal responsibilities.

She muses about wearing each item, prompting herself; she should appreciate them more. Each morning she selects her outfit and knows it reinforces her identity that day. Some days it’s a bit of a struggle and she makes a poor choice.

So, it being a migraine day, on the bedsheets she draws an assortment of the different women she becomes daily. Over the next few months, she prints and intricately clothes the figures, documenting with the ‘made in’ labels as a personal, miniature, global catalog of one day in 2021, in the middle of a pandemic, managing a migraine.

'One Monday Morning I Found 25 Countries In My Wardrobe' stitch and print onto a cotton bedsheet, 120x120cm, 2021. Photo

by Jack Armour

Helen Grundy

Becky Moriarty

Waiting at the traffic lightPen & Pencil on paper, A3, 2021

Cesar Mammadov

French Motive - Oil on canvas, 25x35cm, 2019

Dorotheos Antoniadis

Old house from 1922 paintingTempera on Cardboard, 75x50cm, 2005

Adrian Flaherty

Lambeth Bridge - Oil on canvas, 45x78cm, 2018

Nina Antonakes

Ela Vultur

Manuel de Sousa

Levan Kherkheulidze

The Gate

Patrícia Abreu

Solitude, from Series “Echoing Humanity”

Birgit Schiemann

Ships waiting to enter the Bosphorus

Salome Jishkariani

Anne-Marie Glasheen

Wreckage

Vakho Khetaguri

Alexandr Agafonov

Romina Belda

Vincenzo Cohen

Nino Khundadze

In the Middle

Zinka Barnovi

Erika Zanelli

Life needs ice cream

Sandro Murvanidze

Freedom from the known

Dato Koridze

John Walmsley

Baggage at an art exhibition (#125690)

Tamar Khelashvili

#thinkingbytheriver

Guilherme Bergamini

Anna Safronova

«We stay» consists of works that investigate the issue of war and its consequences on the environment and society.

The project consists of photos of people who stayed in Ukraine even when military actions occurred and have been saying that they will be in their country till the end. Their willingness to protect the country and real devotion command real respect.

In this work, I tried to show the Ukrainians, their feelings and thoughts, whose life was completely changed by the war that suddenly broke out and became a part of ordinary life. Those people whom I photographed, are familiar to me. They represent the types, a kind of symbol. The commonality of thoughts and ideas is an inevitable consequence of similar upbringing, social attitudes, and environment. And at the same time, each person in the picture is a person who has his own life attitudes, point of view, thoughts, and feelings - even children who had to grow up very quickly. We all know that war takes the lives of young people and damages their physical and moral health, however, the ordinary civilian population - women, children, and youth – nation`s future and present, are in a constant state of stress. And this leads to mental injuries and leaves a scar.

The war is something that should never happen, and this project is not only a document of time, which shows the mood of Ukrainian society, but also a warning.

Konrad Hellfeuer

The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Art of Melancholy is to exist between states of remembering and forgetfulness - and the polarity of holding these direct opposites in unison. Inherently, this speaks to the ordinary world; of the places we inhabit, the objects we possess or disown, and the phenomenon we experience within and outside of ourselves. This then underscores the general malaise of the human condition: how to form any real sense of meaning and belonging from life with all its impermanence, change, and increasing obsolescence? Either we sink into this oblivion and surrender to a malaise or navigate to sense-making. Essentially, to "storify" our life from the constant formation and reformation of memories. For what is memory but the invocation of a feeling, emotion, mood, or inflection? Being human is therefore a constant patterning and repatterning, of finding order from chaos and translating ambiguity into meaning. The Art of Melancholy is inherent to all human beings. By knowing this, we become expert witnesses and protagonists in our life and the lives of others; to hold "Mnemosyne" - a term derived from the word mnemonic, which itself is from the Greek mneme which means "remembrance, or memory".

James Mellor

Autumn Orion

Allan Punton

Chroma 8 - Coloured glass, size 63x33 cm each, 2021

Kobi Walsh

CONSUME 1

CONSUME explores the transition between cyclical states of accumulation and depletion. Examined through momentary fragments of light and color, these forces exist in a constant state of movement, never stagnant, fluidly adapting to their environment. The two halves of the series are meant to exist in a temporally contiguous format, blurring the lines between beginning and end, fluidly transitioning between states. Depicting the constant struggle for balance between accumulation and depletion, these states are constantly changing, ever searching for an unattainable equilibrium. Throughout my work I use shifting fragments of natural light within my own environment to parallel the impermanence that I believe defines the human condition.

Daniel Spehr

Nothing is certain. Much is a parody. The echo of emptinessThe Silence of Photogrpahy.

Adam Czech

The series „STREETWALKERS”

Involves noticing the often unnoticed elements of urban everyday life, treated like a specter. Street people are a permanent part of the urban landscape, silent witnesses of reality. The author of the series attempts to give a second life to objects that influence the shape of the landscape, as well as building the typography of the city.

Silesian Streetwalker #1 Graphic Imagery, Algraphy printed on handmade paper, 70x50cm.

Sam Haynes

Stellar

An assemblage made of found objects, developed through an intuitive process, presented in photographic form. The fluidity of the netted fabric enveloping the contoured metal orb conveys a dynamic sense of movement as if propelled from on high. Limited edition photo prints on aluminum Dibond are available in varying sizes. 2022

Chichan Kwong

Women - Acrylic on Sewn Canvas, 8''x8''x8''

Zaur Gamkrelidze

06Bronze on Stone, 34.3x50.8x15.2cm Sculpture

Sam Sherborne

Beacon of Dad

The sculptor's father has been dead for 32 years. This portrait sculpture is normally placed close to his father's actual chair in the sculptor's kitchen. It shines out constant 'Dad' positivity. Medium: Blacksmith-made in forged steel, with a glass lens, LED, and switch. Size: 38 x 18 x 18 cm

Ian Bride

A Six-eyed, spotted thwark and commensal Thwark-snake (Thwarkus stiktika, and Thwarkopthidis filomenos), being attacked by a Beaked crabulus (Kavulas ramphostis).

A fantastical reworking of the Mexican tradition of the Alebrije. All three species were sympatric with the Jabberwock, Jubjub bird, and the Bandersnatch, described by Lewis Carol in 1871. Sadly, no further records of any of these species or their original distributions have even been found. Alebrijes Originated by Pedro Linare in 1930s Oaxaca, who, falling very ill, dreamt of incredible creatures, and upon recovering began to materialize his visions. The value of his 'Alebrijes' was soon recognized, others began to make them, and they are now extremely popular with the Mexican public and international tourists, with the best exponents exhibiting in galleries. I used alebrije-making as an exercise with science students to explore their understandings of biology and their creative practice alongside the role of different forms of text in authorizing knowledge. My own efforts began with imagining, then making, but now I allow my 'beasts' to emerge from the materials, notably driftwood.

Driftwood, acrylic paint, semi-precious stones, 26x50x26cm, 2021

Ilia Ramishvili

Jose Yumar

From Series 'Alive', 2021

Sarah Grace Dye

The Unforced Rhythms of Unfurling

The dictionary describes the word ‘unfurl’ as; to make or become spread out from a rolled or folded state, especially in order to be open to the wind.

Thomas González

René Garza

RE:Struc_00

Upcycled textiles, metal rods, paint, 40"x24", 2021

Cameron Lings

All-Rounders

The fluctuating numbers of UK-based artists are mapped throughout the previous decade via a statistical sculpture of stacked discs.

Laser-cut MDF with steel and reclaimed pine, 25 x 10 x 10cm, 2021

Sam Heydt

Pulling Apart - Heterotopia, analog assemblage, 30''x45'', 2020

Elysian Fields

Caz Hildebrand

‘

a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions ’ – Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities This work consists of separate elements that form a continuous urban landscape made of stoneware clays in line blends from red through to black. They can be configured in multiple combinations and can be displayed on a flat surface or wall-hung.

Stoneware clay, 240x30x20cm, 2022

Matthias Neumann

Camina

Gliclee print on Hahnemühle paper; edition of 10; 17”x11”

Material: Wood Size: 3x3x1.5 m

Fantasma #1, realized for Enclave Land Art, Vall de Gallinera, Spain, 2021

Vazha Melikishvili

Memorial in Senaki

The global view on the war reflects the natural catastrophe, equal to the great flood, and the eternal themethe rebirth of life after such a flood.

Theme 1. Motherland and mother home country – this eternal theme supports the spirits of our ancestors, continuing its existence in us, in our homes, flowing from the past dark times into our veins, genes, spirits at unrest, stupefied and immobilized by witnessing this devastation; in this infinity, the dome protects their eternity.

Theme 2. The steed born from the narrow neck of the war disaster and death funnel with its scarred body, and the hands of mothers and sisters stretched out in the attempt to save its suffered body.

Theme 3. The group of not grieving but begging, with the view of a perspective, with the picture in the hand, the picture of a son, the picture of the pristine human hope, and existence.

Theme 4. The human livelihood force of controversy, a breastfeeding mother with a horn, deep space disturbed by the cosmic unrest, and the rebellious spirit of humans a great force.

Theme 5. The pregnant woman, standing on a groundless infinity, tortured and troubled, but strong, proud of the force that gives birth to the future. The spine. And the dark space. And a man supporting the ceiling with his head, he tries to protect and hide the bodily parts which give generations in the restricted space, and a child, a son, the new and eternal bud from the father’s roots – trying to reach the freedom, thirsty for sky and light. The theme is optimistic; a child, a new life at Noah’s Arch after the great flood.

This is how I did it: I did it directly in gypsum: I followed the fundament all around I built it like a silkworm. Made a cocoon and found me inside it. I did it all on my own, somebody else would destroy it, would make it vanish in its oblivion, and I would not be able to collect it together again. It would not exist anymore.

The Cube, lit with the light from the skies all across is the ray of hope. The solitaire candle would do it well –the symbol of life.

The marble, of course, the marble, white cold, and warm–like earth.

I spent every night sleepless like this: whoever and whatever you are, the god, the sky, the earth – help me to do this.

Sub-themes:

a. The wise stargazer, sitting on the high, gazing into eternity.

b. The upside-down figures walking up and down.

c. Mesmerized d. Bind to each other

e. All meshed up together. Tangled with each other. One hundred and twenty figures with voices like strings, with heads and bodies. The Cube is white and clear, the pristine grave a white shroud. The eternal form with a crack. The great pain embedded in the broken body.

I feel with my fingertips the magical voices of the strings .. . and ... I am creating Problems

Composition: distribution of the space, foreground, and background, ceiling and stairs, bumps and hollows. Interdependence between the round and the flat; Correlation of narrow and wide and its plasticity; Creation of the spiritual space, arrangement of a large and a small, correlation between these two; Model and its completion; The secret of the light and shades; The Cosmic senses.

Works in gypsum are finished.

Three years have passed. 1977 - 1980. One more year has gone by in search of foundry-men

The mold is finished!

The mold is cast!

Five happy years have passed. June 19, 1977 – July 1982

The Sculpture was opened in May 1984.

Sculpture

Tanya Preminger

My purpose is to express the immaterial essence of things in physical stuff: to make tangible the universal essence of the creation.

Containers Marble, 260x200x140cm, 2018

Gillian Davenport

Highlight beauty found in unusally overlooked natural objects.

driftwood

found object industrial stand, found driftwood, resin made remade gneiss stone 2019

Daisy Richardson

Rock Seat

found stool and papier maché 155x100x70cm, 2011

Nugzar Manjaparashvili

Kiss Stone, 1995

a n d m o r e . . .

Radoslav Rochallyi

"You," she said, and then blank tic wait turn appear tic wait turn humming the side seen saw she bellied the bell; she--aflame, appeared at long last

“Who

am I, to you?”

At first you were an asterisk, drawing my attention to additional information at the end of a page.

Then it seemed you were an em dash –inviting an aside–then a comma, bringing pause and surprise. Now you’re a semicolon; a welcome interruption, signaling more to come, and pointing the way for dangling dreams.

Is there a period on the horizon?

I want to know… You are proper punctuation, weaving these wandering words to new conclusions.

what is she doing behind that door? she's been there an hour, maybe three, maybe four… i hear water and splashing and a great wind roar. what is she doing behind the bathroom door?

another sunday night flight, to be in another piece of home wondering, wandering, aching from longing, searching for soil; a place to plant myself tears flow, touching the seed that is me now; you: my needed sun

i wake very early and walk the streets to find a new flower for you, you who are part of my soul.

i wait at the place we usually meet, blossom in hand, for you; and whisper secrets to the wind. if you do not come, i will leave the flower and go, and look for you in my dreams.

if i could pour myself out into a glass, i could feel your lips, you warmth around me, wanting me to enter you, have me all to yourself, filling you with my love. ah, what a drink would would be.

“heavy flower”

i was in a shop looking for flowers, and suddenly hurt a wonderful one. i was holding it, just gazing with care. but the flower was heavy and could not hold itself. i wanted to show that i damaged the flower. but you stopped me, saying it was not my fault.

Walter Lee Allen III

Council Property

Then, In the early hours, by the dim glow of a fluorescent strip light she passed between worlds. The bereaved march in like sheep one by one, that subtle relentless buzzing, breathing in and breathing out, still, after all of this.

My body aches, my lungs burn - cauterised with volcanic ash, in hell grateful that the creatures have been gracious enough to keep a seat warm for me. I wait by my window like a faithful dog beside a grave, the same song on rotation but I have forgotten what it means.

If I collapse, the world goes down with me. Beneath my red raw skin, images of pulsating flesh, dreams doused with gold and ecstasy and in my forever restless sleep I bathed in the cold twilight of the winter. Inevitable as change still using that tired, cliche alias called progress. They butchered all of the trees around here, the lone survivor stood forthright and alone, like a promised savior out in the snow. With strong bare branches reaching out to connect the world anew. They stared at me with wide savage eyes as my heart was blown from my chest by the shockwave. Like a bombs gone off, disembodied mind atrophed, along with limbs and ligaments, the carnage wrapped in cartilage and faint murmurs of “I love you”, distant, from a hospital bed. I walk independently. And still I bleed in the mirror as council property. Branded by a cat with nine tails, crucified beneath a crumbling church ceiling, while a rain of stained glass falls from above forever- you stole my youth but you will never take my crown. With my heart, my tears, my blood and that of those I love ingrained into council carpet I will burn you to the ground- with my love the only thing still separate from the contradictions and hypocrisy of your beloved bureaucracy. From my blood I will paint new futures, empires built on foundations of stars. I will be what I was from the startEverything and anything that you are not.

Casey Soma/ Mad Truth

The Portrait

I knew something was up when she offered to pay for the coffees. She hasn’t done that in all the years I’ve known her. Perhaps she had fallen out with her gallery, wanted me to introduce her to another one.

She didn’t beat about the bush. ‘What they want is a portrait of the founder.’

‘So why have they asked you? Your stuff is strictly abstract, all dots and squiggles, Jackson Pollock on speed. It could be a map of the moon on a bad day or forest fires in Brazil. Why don’t they ask a sculptor or some nerd who makes holograms?’

She sneered. ‘Because they want something modern, something good the public haven’t seen before. And it has to hang on the wall while the formal portrait is under conservation, so no holograms or lumps of bronze.’

I sighed. I’m only an art critic, what do I know? She had a fierce glint in her eye. I feared the worst.

‘What I’m going to do is this.’ Reaching for a napkin, she began to scribble out a design, adding in plastic spoons and lumps of sugar to illustrate the point. I hate looking at an art work before it is finished, or reassuring artists asking what is missing from. If I knew, I’d do it myself.

‘That might just be crazy enough to work,’ I muttered through gritted teeth, ‘has potential, but it will cost you a fortune.’

Never mind, the client is paying all the up-front costs. Can’t you see? It’s what Rauschenberg said his work was doing: “making painting do the work of sculpture”. When it’s finished I’ll sell it to the Met, the Tate or the Pompidou Centre.’

We parted on the best of terms. My approval seemed to have cheered her up. I didn’t see her for several months, until a peremptory order arrived on my mobile phone. The studio, Friday, mid-day.

Friday it rained all day. I was soaked by the time she let me in. ‘Don’t drip on the floor, throw your coat over there. Did you bring any biscuits?’

Biscuits, coffee and small talk first. It was nearly four by the time we made it through to the business part of the studio, the light fading badly. From her spoon and sugar description months ago in the coffee bar I knew this was part of the plan.

For a change, the studio was empty of canvasses, except for a huge one which took up most of the far wall, probably some ten feet by eight. I found a mobile spotlight hidden in one corner, plugged it in and directed it at the painting. A single object dominated the centre, standing out in bright blue and green impasto against the heavy tones of the background. Looking carefully I could see the barely discernible elements were made up of collaged objects: old canvas cut-offs, fragments of unrecognisable detritus, metal advertising signs, even a toy boat. However, it was the figure itself which demanded most attention. The body was a heavy rectangle, surmounted by an oval head made from purple plastic. ‘Because it’s the royal colour,’ she said, urging me along.

Beneath the plastic the face was constructed from swirls of thick paint, like a child’s finger painting in nursery school. ‘Wait,’ she ordered, turning on an adjacent light switch. The face and the front of the painting burst into life. Three dribbles of neon, red, blue and green, hung down, defining the body, casting their coloured shadows on the paintwork beneath. Above, the face turned to a mass of writhing neon snakes, like the ornaments on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, trying to bite one another’s tails. I stood, amazed, trying to take it all in: the snakes, the lights, the haphazard collage. Stood back to get a better perspective. ‘Turn the lights off again.’ She did so. We stood there shoulder to shoulder. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘what do you think?’ ‘Utter bloody rubbish,’ I said. ‘Yes. I know. But I’ve got a better plan. Not quite as crazy, but I think this one will work.’

Tony Warner

One Careful Owner

"So,this is it . "

Still dripping from an unusually calming soak in the bath she caught sight of herself in the steamed up mirror.

"Stop cringeing and try to see potential!"she told herself with more bravado than belief. "If only life could be persued in soft focus." Replacing her new varifocals Sylvia continued squinting at her naked form. Rubbing life back into her pink limbs she mused. What she really needed was a vain man. One who needed specs but kept them in his jacket pocket for menus.

"What if he wears glasses ? Blindfold ?

Not entirely feasable in a busy restaurant but a thought for behind the ear."smiling she put on her housecoat and fished her phone from the Quality Street wrappers in the pocket.

On autopilot she googled " Fountain of Youth."

At this rate the link will end up on speed dial. She scrolls down the options ,reading them outloud seemed to make the expert tips from one of Joan Collins ex husbands seem more ..feasable. After all he above anyone should be the proverbial font. "Control underwear-tick.

The correct length sleeve to flatter the bingo wing-tick. Clever ways with thick ankles -not an issue thankfully ,still remarkably my best feature. Excerises for the sensitive bladder-tick.

BLAH BLAH....Ah Ha !

Now we are getting to the nitty gritty- gardening tips for sprucing up the undercarriage." She regarded her slightly worried reflection.

"Firstly consider a serious trim.

Okie dokie."

Now ,"instructed the video,"be honest with yourself,do you really want a grey area ?" A senior moment flashed past her.

"There are several quick fix solutions. Regular hair dye works fine but avoid root spray or waterproof mascara. In the case of a sparse crop consider a full wax. "Yikes."

Plumping for the topiary option she found it rather theraputic..tantric trimming,could be the next big thing .

Just as she was about to embark upon 10 ways to disguise cellulite her phone announced an incoming message.

"Sorry cannot make it tonight ....some other time maybe?"

Relief and dissapointment flooded through her varicose veins in equal measure. As a distraction she pressed the X rated content on the site and was greeted with tips for using Lilly of The Valley talc when wearing rubber.

In rapid succession she progressed from frocks to gimp masks culminating in a section that she would never unsee. Her username sprang to mind.

Undeterred she clicked back to the main dating site. Houdini.

One Careful owner. Yes ,she still wanted a man. Just for a moment she hesitated. Ok now let's be realistic the voice in her head suggested.

It was a long time since she had played rounders but at least she still knew what team she batted for !

It had been a long marriage and often quite happy. Own teeth ?

Yes.Well mostly ,she would consider implants as preferable to whistling dentures. Hair-yes ,bald men reminded her of Bruce Willis- so definately no thanks.

Sex-yes please, " I should be so lucky,lucky,lucky.lucky,"the Kylie lyrics had an irritating habit of dancing into her thoughtsat the most innapropriate moments.

Another ad popped up for bulk discount on over the counter blue pills. She still had an industrial supply despite her husband devouring them like smarties. Resolving to upgrade to the no add pop up premium she continued.

IQ ,this was an area she had previously been firm on along with tatoos and body piercings. Surely it was a given on Guardian soulmates ?

Should she relent to widen her horizons?

At this rate PULSE would be her only active criteria.

Later that evening after feeding The Ungrateful, her geriatric cat, she wandered back upstairs.

Brandishing her compact mirror she confirmed her earlier suspicions. He was still dead.

"Time to bite the bullet and ring your daughter,she might even be sober for once . " she said smiling.

Plover

Susan

Dostoevsky

During the winter of exception

Anew

Time and again Livelihood of danger

At the tables he took the penniless novel Decided to depict time as at roulette

Respect

He risked honour and in return He was no less ready

In his art

A great gambler For the thrill To court danger With the idiot Breathtaking ideas To plan in exile

Dostoevsky was the potential triumph of a win

And his fictions are essentially about Geneva.

Brotherhood

And most gamble.

Dostoevsky’s novel Began in 1867,

This to explore his friend An absolutely wonderful person. Brink of death

All he was he writes: The idea is harder than that, A risk under my pen.

Letter 330 turned out to be The most challenging.

Simply And no philosophical describing

I don’t think there can be anything

Life

And no philosophical describing

I don’t think there can be anything

In a notoriously intractable project To our will

Oeuvre

While new to virtual conundrum I took: Maybe

To Apollon Maykov, Geneva, 31 December 1867 The resulting work. Affectionate penmanship

He, his Maykov especially, Develop in it [12 January 1868] One of Novelist’s Grandest and [...] creations.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION, A.K.A. ‘BIBLE’

Classics and Introductions assist the reading narratives. Inexpensive general jargon Notes interpret surprises we enjoy. Editions write - We free the stories of spirit. Designed teachers and readers- because pleasures advise Introduction. Wordsworth reader specialists provide rather the revelations, and Appeal to students’ wide understanding for secrets..

Guessing game

Are **** **** to the commissioned To ranging **** , to **** that would **** Our ***** **** than them. In the same **** of **** **** are inseparable from the **** And that **** all contain **** , **** Strongly advise **** To **** this book Turning to the **** **** .

Jes Chatwin

Sandy Soil

I am soooo natural I am soooo natural Who could tell you what you need Who could tell whom to meet if you don't feel the human greed if you don't notice beetle feet

I am soooo natural I am soooo natural

My skin is almost pergament speaking in tongues like elephants or whisper sexy tunes for ants my parents drinking childhood dreams

I am soooo natural I am soooo natural I am sooooooooo natural I am sooooooooo natural

I am not of your kind i am not what you like I am absent if you chant about mine I am part of the new thing I am long away dissolving in enemies creating the rhyme

I am soo natural

I am soo natural

I am soo natural i am soo natural

My face is cloud, my voice is root my sex is rude, my choice is good my noise is food for beings who need my nose is eye my ears can cry my ground is solid and is soft you enter this space - is full of beloved I would let some traces for you my dears but i dont have the time to lick your tears

I am digging the holes for all of you You can enter here - but the friends go through you and you and make you to soil

I am sick of your thinking your functions your role you bore me to leave and to enter the void the everlasting moving and growing sandy sandy sandy soil sandy sandy sandy soil sandy sandy sandy soil sandy sandy soil we are soooo natural we are soooo natural

Leave, leave, leave, branch, leave - a little blue in between - the oooopen

The men who was men and not, cat no cat, no tree no lake, is not turning around for days already. What does that suppose to mean - un poco loco - almost yellow eyes he has - not quiete healthy this being - maybe is not ticking anymore at all. Tick, schiiiit, tick, flak, tick tock rrk nnniick look frog schneck sick fleck bschschschschschschschschschit chchchchchchchchchciz chitz schnitz fatzzzz ritzzzz

On the ground there are yellow lines everywhere - little insects following her (or him?) and the man which is not no tree no cat no lake no earth on his feet - this being draws lines and is curving along this scratched landscape. May be it is only its eyes which could not see anymore the broken spectrals and which is smelling with the mouth on the ground and with its voice vibrating the thin legs of the insects and may be they also dance

The man which is not a cat no insect no men is neighter an inhabitant. So is more a visitor in here which is no nature but full of insects and earthes which is always more than grounds. Or they just inhabit this area for a time, which could be counted in insect-days, or these little waves, reaching the coalblack shore and whispering from their origin, these little strange divers with their black neckes and red ears. The divers seem to realize the lake differently than the too simple structured gray gees, what a projection…

Only 30 million years ago - so just a geological blink only, this area was crowded of walking lizzards and small hunting horses. The horses made these little smacking sounds, mixed with heavy breathing noises of the Terrorbirds, which were not of terror at all and just taking a bit of gras and fruits from time to time.

Nature she said, is what we are waiting for while being sad. Nature, said the man which is not, no cat, no dog, an animal, or not, Nature it sais: Nature? It sounds strange- this word out of this mouth with full lips: nature It is more music than language, what is that, hm? Isn't it able to speak properly? Nature, Nature. Once forever! This phantastic imagination of miracles and flowers and gras, deer water boats lake bathing wasps sausage beach sand palms sunset gulls.

Restart. nature. hm- let’s get in

light half shadow quite brazen to settle here quite short or long or long stretched and lame or fast through the lake or above or under water the ferns as clothes and feathers as hair or bed or moss or grass or soft branches grassed ferns flowered mushroomed sat eaten poured sheathed intertwined slipped mad lost or in search of more and more and more and dissolved disintegrated sheathed mossed flowered faded intertwined braided grassed a roof, a chair or stone or wood and a bed and a table or wood or stone and a pen. and paper or bark or fibers and lines lay to writing

She puts on her make-up on the shore. He applies his make-up in shallow water over a charcoal-black ground. She draws fine lines over the body, in the sand, fine copper rays lead into the deeper water, where the terns conjure small glittering stripes from the bottom and form a white shiny cloud above the still mirror surface, which changes its shape every second. It brushes algae around the fishnets and lifts the blue dresses exactly to the level of the water surface.

The voice doesn't seem so foreign between islands and cranes, coal and Rieth. In the dragging, intense refrain, the seagulls resound from the middle of the sea. That their calls would sound longing is just your version!

Talking to gulls in a slurred voice, adding a creak of tired vocal folds to the soft buzz of beetles, dribbling drops from the left hand onto a smoothly polished fern leaf. Between arms and body the wrinkled skins of bark and birch rustle with the weary groaning of buckthorn bushes, punctuated again and again by the almost inaudibly fine drawl of the marsupial tit.

Low frequencies in nature are earthquakes or large animals, falling giant trees, rumbling surf or the explosion of lava through the earth's crust. So the man who is not a big animal, not a mountain, a woman perhaps rather or a marsupial tit, a June bug, fish or a heron perhaps, so she adds to the whispering all around a muffled boom that only she hears, inside her head, the base of her tongue on the roof of her mouth, a resonant bass between her ears.

Later - the light casts angular shadows over the jagged banks - the man who is like a shadow - blue-black - lays an ear on the still warm dry ground and feels the light waves continue into the soil.

The memory or center that interprets all the information from the delicate movement of the hair cells inside the ear adds a melody to the growl of the floor, like the seemingly distant traces of an opera voice recorded on wax roll, an acoustic event long gone that only calls up in interference and hints the carrying voice of a tenor who may have been a deep alto on the stage of La Scala in Milan.

The ear is so long on the ground that the woman, the man could not even tell how long. Also, the head lying on dry warm ground has long since become part of the shadows that are now everywhere, leaving only a few bright areas on the slopes to remind us of the day.

The head now listens deeper into the ground and one's own body, the gurgling sounds of the stomach, the soft murmur of blood, interrupted sometimes only by the rolling song of the green toads from the distant swamp on the slope of one of the unreachable islands in this ice-age lake.

Good that the moon comes with that pale light.

As a young man, he had traveled from this small Caribbean town of Choroni up to the top of the Cordillera in the middle of the rainforest by night bus, which was all lit up and had loud music in its belly.

The disbelieving look on the bus driver's face when he got off there in the nothingness, where even the road began to crumble at the edges due to the many downpours.

When the engine hum disappeared in the mist that had shrouded this elfin forest in the night, it was so quiet and dark that his body had expanded into the forest as if longing for something perceptible, at the same time not moving an inch away from the roadside, this human aisle in the most densely populated place in the world.

From a far distance - ears aching from the effort of tracking down signs of life - an elongated glass shade - quite surreal here.

Nervously chewing on the bread he brought with him, then he throws it onto the asphalt. Seconds later, a dry rustling sound. The bright spot on the asphalt shows that the bread is gone, and so is the animal that took it.

The experience of being where one's own body is also food. To have only the sense of hearing, The thinking that disturbs rather than helps.

Eyes widened without a response from the black, muscles tensed, ears and the louder rhythmic pulsing of the blood within them.

And then this peeling fear as the first shades of gray reveal the enchanted mist trees. The change in body weight, the burden disappears into the forest, the roadside aisle becomes a security tape, until this feeling also disappears and the first toucans appear, a python shuffles leisurely across the asphalt, the delicate ocelot looks the strange human being in the eye, gently continues on its way like all cats, as if this monkey had actually not been worth the stop.

the measured, circumscribed, ordered, decreed, regulated, measured, recorded, named, numbered, labeled, drawn and stretched, standardized and measured, improved and decreed, But ja- he knows that's romantic, to be in love with disorder. That it is a luxurious state to reject the orders without giving up one's own life, to know it ended between worm and water, earth and free fall.

It is more like a constant border crossing; a suicidal phenomenon, a friend told him in the vastness of the Slovenian Karst. a wish, the functions may stop at last, the behaviour, the rehearsed movements, the nodding of the head, the raised eyebrow, the grin, the disgust at one's own movement; the language should stop, at last, this trained parrying with the polished sentence, the voice disappear, the clothes rot, hang in tatters from the body, the fat - the traces of routine. time; a fiction of the rotation of the earth, the orbit of the sun, the tides, the attraction of celestial bodies in the void. Stretched time, strained time, a mayfly trundles past before his eyes, in its fiftieth year, shortly before retirement, the evening that will be its only one.

From dawn till dusk. An eternity measured by the rhythm of viral life in the blood of the man who is a virus and inhabited by viruses. Who is an old man, a child, a bee of the day, a thought for a fraction of a time so short that his neurons are too slow to propagate it.

The shore also disappears. Its time is blurred. The waves have changed in their course - they stand as the blink of an eye scans the picture it is still - and rigid and as if the fingers could dive in and sink into color and image and time and history the moment coagulates into everything and eternity

And he - is gripped as if the drugs had left him wordless and mute and transported out of the now and why Fuck; time, that monster.

Death is nature. Undead is culture. Dead is culture. Undead is nature.

The man who is now a plant is now growing very slowly, and taking root - very small ones only, not too firm, not rooting too much, the process is also not stopped at all, not controlled at all - at some point along the way this control has been lost. It is also a bit like a rhizomatic existence. The order in love with disorder. The endless fingers into nowhere with a root in a circle of witchcraft. Like a virus from outer space. without language within language. Friendly firering - reentering the circles , moving back and forth in time licking the parallel strings of existence. Being nature making nature being nature making nature being nature making

Ralf Wendt

Nino Melikishvili

Generalized Architecture Infrastructure of transitional complexity Concept From the Last Century

I proceed from number in its geometric pattern (Geometric reflection), which I call an “architectural point”

Number as a potential for form-building in architecture

When designing with a number (through a number) I rely on the principle of proportion which is known in architecture as supposedly easily accessible through numeric or geometric manipulations; but when it comes to complete geometric data – the frequency of points, lines and crossings - proportion is a most complicated structure.

I will reflect on the number spectrum, an extension with the geometrical reflection of a certain complexity. Therefore, what we have in the finale analysis is a spatial structure in which free and architecturally weighed spaces effectively alternate.

An architectural cell – actually a number – changes instantly in front of our eyes in size, as well as form and quantity. This process is to some extent manageable from the outside and we, as creators, could develop it in terms of particular contents as well. It is exactly the number that provides a real condition for an instant transformation of the shape, a phenomenon that borders with the imaginary metamorphosis inherent to human nature. Let us try to evade the process of fragmentary creation so typical of architectural thinking and, of course, yielding the same fragmentary results. In other words, let us try to create an architectural extension. It is logical to call it Generalized architecture.

Architectural point

Egyptian “pure numbers”, ancient numbers, philosophical and theological “point” of Johan Petritsi (Georgia), Le Corbusier’s modular– 48-century-old creative energy is accumulated in one mathematical, namely geometrical, point that I present as an architectural point. I consider the process – Morphogenesis. During the form-building caused from the outside, it is possible to vary the set of cells within the confines of one spatial outline by varying the meaning of the number. The number allows us to introduce the concept of one and a set, the philosophical concept of the relative one in architecture: “every set, in essence, partakes of one” (Proclus).

The key point is to create an alternative to the frozen architectural structure. We proceed from the banal reality – proportion, which we perceive solely fragmentarily; number allows binding the fragmentary characteristics of proportion that present difficulties exactly through their specific tasks - due to their dispersion.

It should be noted that the number itself gives us the possibility for developing the idea of the architectural extension. We can use the number, as far as possible, in the form in which the number is revealed in dynamics. Even the fixation of this process with definite completeness and form is possible in architecture. We can consider this creative process as the organization of the architectural space analogs to reality or we can consider it as a transformative process of the number into material-architectural and indispensably continuous, an uninterrupted form of development. The main thing is to apprehend this real possibility correctly. Thus, specific architectural decisions and, accordingly, specific architectural forms are considered in this project.

We shall specifically consider the specter of the number and not one-way linear sequence of the number. We can imagine the extension of the number (its reflection) as an identical “point” having an infinite radius which sharply is expressed the simultaneous process of order and changes of the number.

Thus, as we can consider the number both with its increasing development when it tends to infinity and with downward development to the point of its primary state, we can consider the architectural space with increasing and decreasing development as well. This is the main principle of the represented project. Based on the architectural problem we can start an architectural progression of space from both the smaller or the larger one –from “the beginning” or from “the end” – depending on the starting point.

We can imagine accepted architectural form as a successive development of space: volume (building) – complex – city or city with a complex involved in it, which from its part contains volumes enclosed in one another like Russian ‘matryoshkas’ (infrastructure of transitional complexity).

The philosophy of proportion, of one and of a multitude, the philosophy of the relative one, allows the creation of an architectural diversity in one specimen - an architectural extension /”Unitary Progression”/. A given space can be considered an outcome of selfproduction. This is architectural morphogenesis.

Feasible Project: Infrastructure of Transitional Complexity:

1. City; 2.Volume – Complex – City

1. City Realizable today

City as a specific finite cell, as well as a set of finite cells – continuity

How can a hypothetical city be imagined at the dawn of the 21st century? Hence the question: how far behind is the past 20th century, i.e. city building problems, left, or is it only an illusion that those problems are left behind? The path from past to future is somewhat obscure. This obscurity might be one of the reasons underlying the intense interest in the city.

Because of this obscurity: It is essential to implement the very essence of morphogenesis – continuity: let us examine architecture as a process giving rise to a functional material form. Within the framework of this rivalry, I naturally consider the city in its entirety - an apparatus that manages and regulates complex social processes, which at the same time has become a victim of these same processes.

Based on the biological multiplication principle, view the city as continuity – a specific finite cell and a multitude of finite cells; as much as possible, maintain organic city relationship between internal - its proper, and outer world - other cities that, in turn, should represent the harmony of relationships by the analogy of constituent cells, indeed showing the difference in scale.

Most importantly, solve the regularity of architectural relativity with the account to social problems; Study various simple tasks on the general basis of proportion.

Relativity of cities – the essence and sign of city continuity: if one city under the system is located e.g. in Australia and another in a different part of the world, e.g. in Georgia, the road flung over to this other city should connect to the relevant road inside it.

The city is changeable. The multitude of its cells (districts) depends on the multitude of the number that we mark as a module; the city is also changeable in terms of the temporal development potential. Therefore, I provide the city in general terms: it can be reduced to any specific scale by adjusting the numeric module, i.e. the multitude of cells. The city structure is produced by a variable numeric module with a planar reflection (space and plane are identified in the architectural sense depending on proportion). The proposed structure is feasible today: a base city can be built with the prospect of temporal development.

Realizable today

Volume - Complex – City: Cognitive research Center/A Multi-functional Hub /Basic module - 1.66666…/ Priority: ECO Climate: Ecosystem&Social and Political Situations

Given structure - Architectural point is also feasible through the development of specific spaces (cognitive, art, sports, trade etc.) from volume (edifice) into the complex and through the potential of transforming them into satellite cities of pertinent content (the complex accommodates volume with the mathematical precision, while the city embeds the complex within itself).

Conceptual Solution

The Anthropocene Raised Above Ground Level

The fabric and consequently the height of the City are governed by the principle of relativity of numbers. This makes it possible to build cities of relative values in– relation to one another, depending on their size and role. The addition of layers in accordance with the time yields the city of continuous development along the horizontal as well as the vertical axes. As a result of layering the habitat levels high above the ground, the City is elevated in time, becoming a big home - City Home, employing technical and technological data that are in accord with the time and simultaneously make the previous layers contingent upon them. 1. Ground level - a pass-through green space of free use. 2. The first layer – a pass-through green space of free use. 3. The second layer - built-up space. The remaining layers alternate in the same sequence, with some requisite exceptions. In this way, the layers are built up, leaving the multipurpose pass-through green spaces between inhabitable levels to provide the latter with light and fresh air. At the same time, spacious good yards within the city fabric ensure the ecological purity of the given construction. Each layer of the city, in conjunction with the underlying green layer, in its essence constitutes an autonomous abode, equipped with high-quality amenities. In broad terms, we have to do with a Self-Sufficient City employing technical and technological achievements in accordance with the time. The layers support the vital energy through the technologically equipped point towers rising up from the ground. They are vertical city-towers made of steel and glass, integrating from a certain height point the inhabitance functions characteristic of the cities. They are also a constructive link for the city as a whole.

1. The Layered City - Big Green City

2.“The Laboratory of the Future”

City inside a container

In an extreme situations, the city is set up in an airtight container, in which the climate is created with the help of a technically and technologically equipped tower that rises high above the ground extracting essential resources from the entrails of the earth and from out in space and converting them into properties suitable for earthly life. As a matter of fact, isn’t the earth itself a container of its kind, protected by the atmosphere and charged with vital power.

Claudi Piripippi

the monsters are alive

Ally Zlatar Foreword

I firmly believe in the power of creative voices to edify our experiences. In "the monsters are alive" my art and poetry create a space for authentic representation and sincere engagement of some of the most profound and difficult aspects of the human condition.

The amalgamation of these works is an exploration of my monsters, struggles and depth behind what living in an unwell body truly entail.

My paintings provide a 'monster' companion as a visual aid to guide you through the potency of the poetry. They aim to provide contextual foregrounding for the concepts the poems are exploring.

What I hope for you as the reader, is to engage in these pages and dark conversations of my lived-in experiences of struggling to live with my monsters. In turn, help broaden your perspectives and understanding of struggles with wellbeing.

tears like petals they fall in the winter and remind me of you beautiful yet delicate and hanging on by fragile hope

my beaches stand still waiting for your waves of validation what a hopeless fixation

the waves whisper words that you once said and embed themselves deep again build sandcastles high on my shores waves crash and you take what is yours you put me on a pedestal stand me tall and watch me fall the waves bring the fury of your seas and remind me of how it used to be

who cries when the pheasant dies and the hunter has had their fill who worships the churches when the truth is stained like glass and the masses bend to their will who pays the price when the bodies remember who sews the wounds and buries the dead after the throne is weakened and the pain did not end who guides the rivers when we are out of air and who is the cowboy with the red beard

lets set fire to the city and let my rage fill the streets the fumes will suffocate as the heat decimates my desire for vengeance will leave no remembrance of the place that caused my severance

i am a king i am a god i am tired i am exhausted i am power i am crumbling i am a lord i am about to cry i am president i am weak i am going to die

i scream as the wifi goes out left with my thoughts as they bounce about i scream louder and you come here we scream together as we both are in fear i struggle deeply and my arms crumble weakly i weigh you down deeply and make you stress weekly but you love me so and around and around we go the problems are so but i can't let you know i scream inside as I can not hide when no noise comes out you never feel doubt that the pain has not gone and fuck, your not wrong so you pull me near and hug me so dear that my world stops spinning but the fury is not dimming and when the pain comes back we turn to our dance but it's not one of romance it's just poor luck that you are stuck spinning with me

my tears sting like acid warm and speeding down my face i can't catch them all i couldn't be there for you

blankets are boulders, debilitating and yet strong my eyes watched a thousand memories and none can bring you back i feel pain

today, i withstood the trials of agony as my life is still lingering on trapped in my sorrow, is a tale of a life gone past why are coffins made of wood when life is fragile as glass? even if i was a soldier, you know i hate battles for i have wounds from wars long ago and they seem to last plough fields with my weapons, and abuse my military vest as i have grown too tired of this ferocious fight and wish borne was a concept rather than a place

let's get brunch

let us listen to funky tunes let us fight the bourgeois let us meet in the food court let us cuddle until the communists win let us do anything but be left with our thoughts

sorry i catfished you with false hope of the person i could be and the shortcomings of who i am sorry for my fleeting beauty and fake tan

i came as i was, with a résumé to impress i don't think i was qualified for this role to love you

my mother was a pile of crumpled up papers for she had ideas that never came to be these crippled writings could not stand she has a body that was becoming a blank page again i wonder what shall she be her strength comes not from cast iron but from the purity of her pain she cries for mercy and to make meaning from her tired aches her finite pages need ink and seek refuge in the hopes of change it is time now for her to prepare for new calligraphy to remain

please god no more cardio no more blisters on my fragile feet have mercy on the unfit for our breaths are too weary to compete

the games have begun grab your hopes, grab your guns grab your fears, grab your tears grab all that you cling to dear as the bells ring some cry, some sing some come back feeling fucking ecstatic others frantic most are beaten, hopeless and defeated but remember everyone has to compete

take a seat on my yellow chair

forget my back, my bones, or my aching joints

take rest in my patience and my relentless desire to please

my parents heard a drum in the distance but did not listen for they were young and in love

if they paid attention, they would hear it was me calling them with a snare drum cadence i gaze toward them and see their smiles young hearts seldom beating for i have not come sadness stopped me from playing as I know how the story would unfold for they bought me a drum to drown out the noise of their fights but no matter how hard i played it was just a tin drum and life is too unstable to warn them to run

my crumbling skies hold onto things they know preachers preach sinners sin the rain will always begin

church windows are stained and pillars are in pain columns falter and capitals are altered but at least i know demise will come

i just want to get banged banged up really good

screw me over in all the ways i know you could burn, scratch and tear through my skin make me rethink what it means to let someone in rip my hair and pull out my teeth let the blood drip down all over the sheets banging me up is what you do best so i'm ready for you to destroy what hope i had left

all tied up in my thoughts and too busy to answer your calls

my laces are twisted and ideas complicated

it would be nice to escape but, it is also quite comforting knowing my knots are my own and not having to untangle yours

laying in the proverbial eye of the storm these turbulent winds paralyze my body crippled by anguish and experiencing the fragile nature of the human condition memories do not live in objects but in our tender agony for when the storm settles and the memories are released we rest in the comfort of knowing ferocious winds are just air

last night i saw a moon surrounded by 28 stars i wondered why those gravitate to what is darkest perhaps they see there is depths to the profound abyss of the night or maybe they want to see their own brightness shining back

his eyes were filled with fear i held him in my arms i feel his heart, it cries for too long the words he said i'll remember for a very long time smoulder ascends golden flames started to rise as his shadows fade into the light

your stomach is empty because you starve with sadness why do you wish to be bones when they are too fragile to hold his love tears are meaningless when you leak like a faucet young girl, you are drunken with tiredness and your iron eyes have rusted with tears stop searching for him in every fractured night terror and every melted scene nothing can bring back the dead

i will sit as the sirens are blaring they do not stop wailing and my arms have not stopped flailing my bomb shelter is weak and filled with my shrieks but no one can stop the demise so i sit in the corner and cry take down the barricades and unbolt the gates my defence is weak and i'm scared of what awaits as i can't take this pain anymore and hope is no more there is nothing to do now, but sit here and cry so i will do that and standby

unmask your monsters and let them breathe let them be wild in the night or coy in the day let them guide your impulses and give you what you crave for they have been trapped too long and need to get out let them run wild and let them be free in the end, you will thank me as i let you truly be

yellow walls, red socks and mass hysteria they remind me of the weight i carry the males gaze on and the gospels whisper that i am a broken man with a soul migrating there is no food for my mind or blades for my fury my body is of pain and the colours grow weary the mezzanine watches as my eyes fade and realize the severity of sensations burning

i scatter my cigarettes before you

they fall in the shape of who i am that disgusts you for i tread a dangerous path

tears flow for where i am this place is not me and i am not being i crave the geist of nicotine and hope that seeing this, you won't be scared of me you put a dart in your hand, inhale deep and breathe out the grief of the woman that i am

i'll never be famous i'll never be known

i'll waste away into the waves of the Styx

buried deep in the ground with my aspirations transfixed and be remembered not for me but for the space, i made when i left

when the tigers break free there is an unrestricted view of salvation but i fear this feeling of fullness

i see red rivers and satin dresses i also see the faulters of my demise

there is comfort and chaos in this certainty and yet my bones and flesh are ready

fate guides me down a broken road volition faintly whispers for me to run angst slows me down and i am deadlocked

i am in a stalemate with myself and i cease to move the three voices iterate how i am not alone but their patience grows weary but the choice is now mine to see who i follow

i screamed into the darkness to give me power, give me glory and get me out of my father's suit i see empty bottles as i drown above water i see burn marks on benches and in the mist i see i no longer belong

sometimes when i see clothes hanging out to dry i think it is not about the way they hang on the line but rather look at the shadows of what they are and that makes all the difference to me

i wish one day my poems will get translated for i hope the words sound nicer in Dutch i want them to call me the golden dagger for my poems will be covered in warrior's blood my blade will roar in Korean and hide the fallacies in my grammar the books will be a house of flying bayonets for the Portuguese that will unsheath the wrath of my pain i hope my words will prevail in the mornings of other languages as my one is dead to me

i look to the horizon for suns that will never come for moments that were desired and memories that were to come but i layed flowers down and you drifted away what is left of me is far from peace just a tear glistening for the sunbeams of you

in the mountain skies, you see the hurricane of my agony i paint you a pretty picture of it fragmented clouds, dawn breaks through a violet sunrise, fields of fury and thunder amongst the hills i make you feel a hundred rivers there is such beauty in the forecast i share with you but you don't look to the skies and see my heavens you turn your head instead the weather is too unstable you are like the others and do not embrace my rain i am left being the storm of the century that never came to be

just

those petals were pale as a white flame the grass as a soft as the first touch of skin

it's been twenty years since i first ventured down that road and it may be another twenty more before i forth come again and still, this is the memory that i cling to in the darkest of days when the walls of Jericho have crumbled and the library of Alexandria is set ablaze i cling on to this moment in time i wear this memory as a necklace with the beads coloured with those petals lights glimmer on my golden mask where i stand tall facing these fires watching the windswept plains abolish Babylon i embrace the vastness of the night because in every ruin i see the light of my field

look

the devil went down to Kyoto he was under the gun again he spread romantic propaganda and a tale of treachery and lechery across the wild west but things are not okay anymore for the devil could not die he never liked to quit for he was an artist of destruction whether i love or hate his ways i know he cannot rest

please don't let me die in Tulsa

my long violent history has caught up

my past was a western movie i was riding on a trustee steed searching for a beautiful damsel however, i was a lone cowboy and a stranger to every town i had my fair share of run-ins with dreary sheriffs i have crossed many roads to not die in Waco and swam through many rivers to not lay down in Dallas for you see a cowboy never dies as they are far too precious cowboys ride into every sunset and add essence to each saloon the world would be a lot less resilient without the cowboys so please do not let this cowboy die

televangelist fired his gun not with bullets but scripture pierces the crowd crimson rivets flowing, he was making his voice loud he would recruit in gun shops as they are prone to be seen his gospels were preaching false dreams and revolution he prepared armies with holy rites and a constitution there was no house of God when the televangelist was louder preachers should not be politicians why are they fully loaded?

el matador

as i get older i get more afraid of when the horns are too near and he only sees red bold, brave, and swift will i be as i meet the world ender he will raise the dead and bury me deep but i will put up a fight and make him dream of me tonight

asked for just a slice of bread and pain but you blunt the knives and cut the ties i said "please come back to the dinner table" as i cannot sew my sorrows without you eating honey cake is now a game of one's own and cutting the pages of recipe books begin again

i saw your blade and you burned my shield you scorched my skin with an awful taste of vengeance while this malice attempt to joust was a delicate balance of hope and deceit

what it taught me was that a renaissance had begun

no one donates to my causes or feed the homeless in my churches for my cities are crumbling and my farmers cannot grow crops for harvest they never reap what they sow the great melancholy of life is that not every ship gets sent to Troy and not every person is destroyed but those who do feel the pain a hundred more than you and know they are not worthy

surrounded by dumpster fires

that have a stench of broken dreams none of them are mine but the fumes continue to rise i look into each of their eyes and see the ghosts of lives gone by they have set their garbage ablaze and watch the flames slowly die maybe we are modern and it is not the right century for hope the American dream is dead and in all this despair, i see a glimmer of kitsch each dumpster is an artwork of dismay and transformation

pluck the feathers off the wings of those that cannot fly cast aside the cross for those who cannot be free lay them in a field of grass if they cannot appreciate the rain those who fled to the ports of europe will never reach the threshold of paradise as they have a room with the darkness of their wounds locked by a key of silence parted forever is them and who they want to be

R.Prost Etudes

A n d l a s t b u t n o t l e a s t , s p e c i a l t h a n k s t o a l l w h o s u p p o r t u s !