Just posted a small introduction to the work of amazing artist Joseph Beuys: ”Beuys’s concept of “social sculpture” represents perhaps his most radical contribution to both art and political thought. Unlike traditional sculpture, which shapes inert materials into static forms, social sculpture proposed that society itself could be molded and transformed through conscious human activity. “Every human being is an artist,” Beuys famously declared, not because everyone should make conventional artworks, but because everyone possesses the capacity to reshape social relations and thereby participate in the ongoing creation of culture.” #josephbeuys #anartapart #carlabrahamsson

In this week’s WEEKLIES post at our Patreon, I write about the noble art of flower-pressing: ”I assume it’s also very much a Western pseudo-scientific-quasi-poetic attitude that essentially no longer exists: the desire to understand and interpret nature according to pioneering heroes like Darwin, von Humboldt, and of course, my Swedish namesake Carl von Linné (Linnaeus). But my experience tells me I have a hard time memorizing standard names as well as Linnaeus’s Latin ones – whereas traditional and genuinely Swedish names, often with bizarre local folk twists – are usually easily remembered. For instance, a nice and common ”Småkörvel” plant is technically named Anthriscus sylvestris, but has a multitude of weird names in Sweden: Hundkäx (dog’s biscuit), Hästkummin (Horse’s Kumin), Drottningens Spetsar (The Queen’s Lace). This anarchic-romantic-traditional naming fills me with great joy, as it can probably tell us more of the actual quality and possible meaning of the flower than any...

I spent just about every evening of my high school years at the Stockholm Cinematheque. That’s why I find Adair’s book and Bertolucci’s film version of The Dreamers interesting (despite the horrible ”May 68” romanticism): ”Both works understand the cinematheque as more than a repository of films—it functions as an archaeological site where the sedimentary layers of cultural memory accumulate and interact. Like Proust’s madeleine, each screening triggers involuntary memories that collapse temporal boundaries. Yet this metaphor, powerful as it was in 2003, requires serious reconsideration in our current digital age. The physical cinematheque, with its darkened theater and communal viewing experience, has been largely supplanted by the algorithm-driven recommendation engine. Where once cinephiles gathered in sacred spaces to commune with celluloid gods, they now navigate infinite scrolls of content, each click generating data points that feed ever more sophisticated prediction...

Just posted an introduction to John Michell, the lovely & trippy British esthete filled with a curious mind and many talents: ”Many of his drawings illustrate concepts from his books: visualizations of the New Jerusalem pattern he identified at Glastonbury, geometric projections of stone circles, or diagrams of cosmic proportions. Others appear more intuitive—psychedelic visions capturing the energy patterns he believed animated sacred sites. In this way, Michell’s art functioned as both demonstration and revelation, a visual language for expressing ideas that transcended conventional scholarship.” #johnmichell #thefenriswolf #carlabrahamsson