Dorian SOUSA CALVO – gets shampoo in his eyes too frequently
Elise LACOURT – hit my head in the house of mirrors
Jacopo MOGLIA – chief contemplative officer
Kasra KARAMI – I build cages for a living
Kristina SHATOKHINA – woman of vision; high priestess
Margaryta ALEKSANDROVA – the witch
Nael NASSAN – funky monkey need banana
Sherley DE DEURWAERDER – token frazzled Luxo girlie
Sofia MILLER – entertains the primordial Hylemxylem
Stefan CAPITANESCU – Opium fragrance lord
Stefan DIAC – ten years younger under the beard
Umut UCAK – level 103 yapper
Valère GAUBE – none of the things I did was ungrammatical
Zoltan TAJTI – Quincy knew Picasso. lk.
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Find us at: campus buildings (reception areas, magazine stands),
Hazelnut cookies for the holiday feeling Recipe
student lounges, chill-out-zones, Dalmat CoffeeHouse, and LLC.
Join us! We are looking for graphic designers, writers, artists, photographers, reporters, administrators and all sorts of sailors willing to (wo)man the good ship ROUX!
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Cover designed by Kristina Shatokhina Poster p. 14–15 hand-drawn by Sherley De Deurwaerder
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There’s something tantalizing about a museum programme that doesn’t just showcase art but actively confronts the structures shaping how we live, think, and feel. In 2025, Mudam Luxembourg will unveil an intellectually ambitious programme, primarily focusing on the making of art itself. With a lineup spanning ecological art, immersive soundscapes, and retrospectives of pivotal artists, the museum promises to ignite discussions about identity, memory, and the changing role of art in a complex world. The result? A programme that feels simultaneously urgent and timeless: something to truly look forward to.
designed by Sofia Miller
Exhibitions, Pt. I: Spring Season
Opening the season is Time & the Tiger, the European debut of Ho Tzu Nyen’s mid-career retrospective. Known for his striking video installations, the Singaporean artist works on Southeast Asian myths in a way that reflects the transformation of the region. Out of it comes a rich array of references that interrogates the way time shapes cultural narratives. At the exhibition’s heart lies T for Time (2023 –ongoing), an algorithmically driven dual projection that juxtaposes cultural anecdotes from Asia and Europe. It suggests that our understanding of time is as much a construct as the stories we tell ourselves.
Lisa Oppenheim’s upcoming Mons. Steichen exhibition doesn’t merely revisit Luxembourgish artist Edward Steichen’s legacy. It rather occupies it, reimagining the frequently overlooked corners of his creative life: his abandoned paintings, his passion for Delphiniums, and the textile designs he crafted from everyday objects in the 1920s. Rather than focusing on a single project, Oppenheim demonstrates Steichen’s ability to synthesize and reimagine disciplines, creating new works that dialogue with pieces from Luxembourg’s MNHA collection. Together, her works and Steichen’s form a layered, kaleidoscopic portrait of “Monsieur Steichen,” highlighting the often-overlooked role of women in his art and life.
Ho Tzu Nyen. T for Time: Timepieces, 2023 – en cours Commande du Singapore Art Museum et du Art Sonje Centre avec le M+, en collaboration avec le Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo et la Sharjah Art Foundation
PRO MACLAVELLO, OU Afin d’être parfaitement honnête, il faut n’avoir rien d’autre à faire
:Sulfureuse réputation que l’on taille d’ordinaire au florentin l’auteur du Prince (1469–1527). Est-il pas de bon ton, entre bonnes gens, de le peindre en cynique professeur de vice et cordon bleu de la basse cuisine politicienne, pour qui « les actions les plus injustes et les plus atroces deviennent légitimes lorsqu’elles ont l’intérêt ou l’ambition pour but » ? – comme l’écrit, candide ou hypocrite, Frédéric II de Prusse en son Anti-Machiavel, sorte de pamphlet à quatre mains composé avec Voltaire, lequel trempait décidément dans tous les mauvais coups de son époque. Il entre dans de tels jugements belle part de sottise et de phantasme, colportés par des personnes qui ne l’ont souvent jamais lu, ou mal lu, ou bien – rouerie toute machiavélienne – font mine de le mal lire.
Pour qui lit Machiavel avec un modicum d’intelligence (de même que lui nous objurgue de lire l’histoire sensément), il appert, à rebours des idées reçues, que son intention est profondément humaniste. Curieux ennemi de l’humanité, en effet, qui confesse ainsi sa démarche : « C’est ton devoir d’honnête homme si, par le malheur des temps et de la fortune, tu n’as pu faire toi-même le bien, d’en donner aux autres des leçons, à cette fin que quelqu’un d’entre eux, plus aimé du ciel, puisse le réaliser » (Discours sur Tite-Live, liv. II, avant-propos). Ses détracteurs ne verront dans cette profession de bonne foi qu’un cynisme de plus ; et certes notre auteur n’est-il pas étranger à l’ironie, voire à l’antiphrase. Voyons-y donc de plus près.
Je sais que ta nature ne te porte guère à ce langage ni aux machinations, mais ose, car il est doux d’obtenir la victoire ; nous saurons ensuite nous montrer justes.
– Sophocle, Philoctète
Vices privés, vertus politiques
« Pier Soderini réglait sa conduite sur les principes de l’humanité et de la patience. Il vit prospérer sa patrie tant que les circonstances se prêtèrent à ce régime. Mais vinrent des temps où il fallait rompre avec une politique d’humilité et de patience, et il ne sut pas rompre : il tomba, et avec lui, sa patrie » (Discours sur Tite-Live, liv. III, chap. IX). Ainsi Machiavel résume-t-il la chute, en 1512, du gouvernement républicain de Florence et le rappel des Médicis par leurs partisans. Ils n’auront été chassés de la ville en tout que dix-huit ans. La sentence est assénée avec un laconisme de théorème mathématique. Soderini, l’homme fort de la démocratie florentine, ne s’est pas montré à la hauteur de la tâche, lui qui comptait, « à force de bienfaits, désarmer ses ennemis » (Ibid., liv. III, chap. III) ; il a même, semble-t-il, fait preuve d’une singulière éclipse de tout sens politique. En termes machiavéliens, nous dirions que Soderini a manqué de virtù. Ce mot, dont notre auteur fait un usage constant, est célèbre pour les problèmes de traduction qu’il présente : il se dit d’une personne aussi bien que d’une chose et signifie, tour à tour et tout à la fois: énergie, intelligence, bravoure, charisme, ambition, fermeté, sens des réalités, capacité d’adaptation, maîtrise de soi, force de caractère, goût de l’effort, etc. Hasardons de résumer tout cela en un mot : excellence. Plus l’homme d’Etat
a de virtù, plus il pourra compter sur lui-même pour triompher des situations qui, en temps de paix comme de guerre, se présenteront à lui. Il entre dans ce concept aussi la disposition à avoir un comportement reconnu comme moralement vertueux ; mais il y entre tout autant – et c’est là l’essentiel – la capacité, à tout moment, de ne l’être pas. Savoir être au besoin faux, cruel, ingrat, glorieux, querelleur, est une virtù ; l’être toujours et comme par défaut, ne l’est pas. De même pour l’honnêteté, la justice, la loyauté.
Soderini le savait, qui a manqué du courage de mettre cette science en œuvre. C’est la fin qui détermine le recours à tous ces moyens ; et de fin, Machiavel ne s’en propose qu’une.
Maintenir l’Etat
De vivre en une époque troublée – et celle de Machiavel ne laissait pas de l’être – rend sensible à la précarité de cette institution humaine qu’on appelle la cité, ou l’Etat. Les lois sont aimables, qui nous permettent de régler nos différends sans violence ; qui, la bannissant hors de la cité, ménagent un espace propice à l’éclosion de délices plus civilisées. Ne pas devoir choisir, par exemple, entre tuer son prochain et manger à sa faim est déjà, d’un certain point de vue, un raffinement exquis. Chacun a la Capoue qu’il peut…
La politique est l’art de faire vivre ensemble des êtres différents. Or toute vie en société génère des conflits. Les causes en sont ancrées dans la nature humaine, qui est immuable : « Dans le corps de toute cité on trouve ces deux humeurs : le peuple désire n’être pas commandé ni opprimé par les grands, et les grands désirent commander et opprimer le peuple » (Le Prince, chap. IX). L’avarice des uns excite la crainte des autres, qui ne se sentent pleinement à l’abri qu’une fois devenus prédateurs à leur tour : ainsi la volonté de se défendre devient-elle à son tour désir de dominer, et la violence s’engendre elle-même. Si la cité succombe à ce cercle vicieux (ce qui doit arriver, faute de remède), reparaîtra un état antérieur à l’ordre, où la morale n’a pas cours et ne prime d’autre loi que celle du plus fort. C’est l’enfer d’une telle guerre civile que Machiavel cherche à conjurer ; ou, alternativement, la lente et infinie corruption qui naît des désordres qu’on laisse empirer, laquelle sape la virtù de la cité et la rend mûre pour être conquise, par quoi elle perd sa liberté et, in fine, son existence même.
Il convient donc, afin que chacun puisse vivre moralement, ne soit pas obligé de voler, de tuer, pour que la vie soit autrement que courte et misérable, de maintenir l’Etat, quand il existe, et de le fonder là qu’il n’existe pas. Toutes les réflexions du florentin ne tendent qu’à élucider les conditions de possibilité et les chances de réussites de cela. Elles sont adressées à tout homme, prince ou citoyen, qui sent son destin lié à celui de sa communauté, car nul n’est libre dans un pays qui ne l’est pas. Mais cet esprit lucide, pragmatique, dont le seul parti pris est de ne s’illusionner en rien, sait aussi ce qu’il en coûte de s’engager de la sorte pour le bien commun : on y peut perdre la vie, on y doit assurément perdre l’âme, pour autant qu’on y croie : l’établissement des conditions de possibilité de la morale a ses besoins que la morale réprouve. L’Etat ne se régit pas avec des patenôtres, disait Cosme de Médicis !
De là ces fameux « trucs » pour prendre et garder le pouvoir, dont sont, il est vrai, proscrites les pudeurs de midinette, mais qu’on voit trop souvent arrachés à leur contexte, bêtement simplifiés et systématisés à outrance : de la primauté des apparences, du bon usage de la cruauté, du cas qu’il faut faire des promesses, des bienfaits de savoir être lion et renard, etc. Machiavel est tout sauf un doctrinaire étroit. Ce serviteur de l’Etat, qui dit « aimer sa patrie plus que l’âme » (lettre à Francesco Vettori du 16 avril 1527), est un réaliste au sens noble du terme ; et réalisme n’est pas immoralisme. Ecoutons donc, tout simplement, ses propres mots : « Un esprit sage ne condamnera jamais quelqu’un pour avoir usé d’un moyen hors des règles ordinaires pour régler une monarchie ou fonder une république. Ce qui est à désirer, c’est que si le fait l’accuse, le résultat l’excuse. Ce n’est pas la violence qui restaure, mais la violence qui ruine qu’il faut condamner » (Discours sur Tite-Live, liv. I, chap IX). Raison d’Etat oblige… Et qu’il soit enfin permis de dire aux pudibonds que l’on n’a à ce jour rien trouvé de mieux qui justifiât un moyen, qu’une fin.
par Valère Gaube mise en page de Kristina Shatokhina
A LOVE STORY THAT NEVER HAPPENS.
A long time ago, even before recorded history, their love had already been. He loved her as deeply as she loved him. Love gave them life, purpose, and meaning. In their tribe, everyone knew that Noah and Pum would have the strongest, most beautiful union, for theirs was a love so pure. They hunted together, shared their dreams and burdens, and planned a future together. Nothing could kill their love except death. -- Except death?
They didn’t remember how they came up with the idea of the love ritual. At night when the goddess of harvest descended to Earth, they made a vow to bind their souls eternally, promising that in every new life, they would find each other again. The vow was sealed with blood.
“So be it”, laughed the gods. Were there gods who stood against their love, or did fate decide to play a cruel joke?
Noah died on a hunt, mauled by a tiger, and Pum turned old, carrying the memory of the promises they made, taking their love to the grave.
The vow was sealed with blood.
In their next life, they met again, as the vow had promised. But they met as enemies. Pum’s soul was born as a boy named Rickard, while Noah’s soul became Nils. They could not remember why they fought, -- perhaps due to an ancient family rivalry? Destiny watched with amusement as the two young men clashed until, in the heat of battle, Nils swung his blade and ended Rickard’s life.
The vow was sealed with blood.
So, they met again. He was a priest. He officiated her wedding to another man. In another, he was her dog, the one she euthanised. Well... perhaps in the next life... The vow was sealed with blood.
written
by Margaryta Aleksandrova designed by Kristina Shatokhina
This story is not about fish. I swear to God, it’s not. It isn’t. It is about something completely different. The story, as it were, unfolds in a constantly present present, in the past that follows a forever lasting future. If you know what I mean.
It also unfolds in a house. It’s an old house, a house you can and will find in all corners of the world. It can be gothic, white, yellowish – colour does not matter. This particular house is equipped with a bunch of chairs, in them a bunch of serious people in neckties and suits, but not all houses are like that. But: they are similar.
“Why on Earth would you want your fish canned, Mr So-and-So?” asked Mr Thisand-That, to which the other replied “Because I like my fish to stay fresh.”
“Yes, but canned fish was also once fresh. We caught it, fresh, so it’s fresh when you eat it,” added This-and-That.
“Don’t tell me that I need to like your preserved icky-yucky fishy fish,” shouted Ms Such-and-Such, facing backwards, looking at So-and-So. “I don’t need stale fish, marinated or else.”
He waited,andtogether;themselvespulltotimethemgivetoawayturned allowing themgivetoawayturnedHedistance.theincruisertrimtheonresttoeyeshis
“Why, you do not need to have marinated fish. There is always the option to choose from our spread of dried fish, fish in vinegar with onions, salted fish pieces and salted fish paste. There is a bunchy bunch of methods of preserving fish, all kinds of fish but jellyfish, we’re the Willy Wonkas of fishes,” answered So-and-So.
“You think of yourselves as some sort of magicians then,” replied This-and-That. “You sure seem to live in a kind of la-la fairytale land,” added Such-and-Such. “The problem is,” she continued, “that you fail to walk both feet firm on the ground. People don’t want yesterday’s fish, they don’t want to eat what they had yesterday. No, they want fresh, brand new fish, straight-fromthe-water fish. Always and forever, fish.”
the saga FISHMONGERS
text & layout: Zoltan Tajti
“Always, and forever?!”
“Yes, we very much dum-deedee-do” answered Such-andSuch and This-and-That in unison, or unison, who cares, feet off the ground, same feet facing the centre of the room.
The two kinds of fish-people walked differently. One group walked forward, and the other group walked backwards, with their heads also wrung backwards. Naturally, the backward looking-walking people were the ones who liked fresh fish. Or was it the other way around? Who knows… the point is, they walked in the same direction, but at the same time they did not – it is like: you have your fish and eat it, too. Or something to that extent.
“Well, you’re a bunch of idiots, then. Nuttos, weirdos and downright liars. Have you asked the peoplesy about this? Have you conducted thorough research, picked their brains, surveyed their opinions and gotten their take, or are you just pulling this nonsense out of your hat.
The walkers did not see each others’ heads and mouths, so no one had any idea what the other group was talking about. Nor did they care. They breathed the same air, though. Meaning, the exact same air. Backward facers inhaled what the forward facers exhaled. And again, naturally, the forward facers were the canned fish lovers… or… again: it doesn’t matter. Blinded by fish, all of them.
And they were, in fact, pulling everything out of their hats, preposterous house-dweller fishmonger trash-talkers. The truth is: you leave fish out too long, canned or fresh, it’ll stink up your house. Any house. Get it? Any house.
“We possess the truth,” said one or the other, his-her face facing in a direction. “No, we do,” replied another his-her face facing in another direction of the same direction. “No, we! We do-do-do,” resonated another fisher, and soon the whole stale-aired nuthouse reverberated like a cave of smooth and naked walls.
Meanwhile the fish… well… who cares about fishes, anyway?
by Kasra Karami
The Unnecessary Problematisation of Carrot
I don’t like smoking, but I enjoy its culture. What if we replaced smoking with eating carrots? For instance, after class, students would head outside and stand around, eating carrots. Or we’d have dedicated carrot rooms in buildings. At train stations, a square area would be marked for carroteating. People on the street would call out to passersby, asking for peelers.
Formula One cars would have advertisements for carrot-producing sponsors on their bodies, and housing ads would include lines like, “Looking for a tenant, non-carrot-eater.” The best carrots would be packaged in Cuba. In CA support groups, someone would stand up in front of the others and say they haven’t eaten a carrot in six months.
I was watching Basic Instinct when my mind started reformulating its iconic scene in this new world:
Sharon Stone, dressed in white, sits on a metal chair surrounded by a group of male interrogators. They’re busy arranging files before starting their questions when she pulls out a carrot and begins peeling it. The men’s attention shifts to her, and one of them, in a calm, commanding tone, says, “This is a no-carrot building, ma’am.”
Sharon briefly lifts her eye from the carrot
container and replies, “What are you going to do? Charge me with carrot-eating?”
Part Two
My mind begins to expand the applications of carrots in this fictional world. Flowers are a strange gift if you think about it. Imagine cutting a plant and giving it to someone who doesn’t know what to do with it. Most of them don’t even have a scent. What if, instead, carrots were considered as beautiful as flowers?
Brides would toss bouquets of carrots wrapped in white lace at weddings. People would tattoo carrot designs on their arms. Little girls would press thin slices of carrots between the pages of their diaries. In cemeteries, carrots would be planted on gravestones.
ce n’est pas une carotte
In this world, Madame Bovary from Gustave Flaubert’s novel would decorate her straw hat with ribbons and carrots. Or the body of Hamlet’s Ophelia would float down the
river, eyes closed, holding carrots in her hand, and the Houses of Lancaster and York fight the “War of the Two Carrots”.
Part Three
The carrot world grows larger, drawing meaning from everything it can. I can no longer stop everything from turning into a carrot. Instead of being entertained, I begin to feel trapped in a heap of reproductions of this strange world –a world that begins with biting into the forbidden carrot and
Adam’s expulsion from paradise, where the carrot crown becomes a symbol of freedom.
The presence of carrots finds meaning everywhere, forcing the mind to look beyond them and search for their reason in the scene: a carrot symbolizing love, melancholy, or existential anxiety. And this becomes the end of my imagination, just before I forget the carrot and its small place in my real world.
As a child, my mother would sometimes bake carrot cake, leaving a slice in a dish on the kitchen table for me to find when I came home from school. I focus, trying to recall the smell of the cake after all these years. The taste of cooked carrot in soup. The shredded carrot in salads. I don’t think that I liked it that much. Slowly, everything returns to its place. I take a sip of tea, and it tastes like tea.
