visual diary 03

from the depths of my psyche

Oct 08, 2023

Language

Depending on the language we speak, we have different perceptions of the world. Languages we learn train us to be thinkers, not just speakers. Put differently, language can have an impact on our behaviors and dispositions.

To illustrate, time is very abstract but we talk about it as if it was concrete.

In Swedish the word for future framtid means ‘front time’

Similarly in German, Zukunft means ‘to come towards someone’

Does the future always lie ahead of us?

In Aymara, one of the languages spoken in Peru, the word for future translates to ‘behind time’. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, it’s outside your visual awareness. And the past is in front of you because you can see the past.

In essence, we are bound by linguistic constraints.

How can two people coming from different cultural backgrounds ever understand each other?

Worth the visit: Philip Guston at Tate Modern

‘I began to feel that I could really learn, investigate, by losing a lot of what I knew.’

– Philip Guston

Guston’s major retrospective recently opened in Tate Modern and the ★★★★★ reviews keep coming.

This review’s meat analogy struck me the most: ‘Guston’s paintings should be seen in the flesh. They are so very meaty... Elsewhere, short brushstrokes rise one above the other like racks of ribs’.

Paris FW #1 Wish List

Coperni’s CD Player Swipe Bag

Always celebrating designers who explore technology and weave it through their own progressive designs.

Watched a film at this year’s BFI Film Festival

Aki Kaurismäki – Fallen Leaves: Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival

A film done in one take. Deadpan humor. Few words. Sweet odd-couple romance. An ode to the little beauties of life and finding light in the darkness.

𝓬𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂 of Timo Salminen <3

dusky blue shadows with bold contrasts manage to spark up moments of rare poetry from even the dimmest of lives.

Another creative mind who fascinates me: Claude Fayette (1866 - 1946)

[Humans] are indeed the microcosm—a little world fashioned from the same elements and in accordance with the same beautiful necessity as is the greater world in which he dwells. When he builds a house or temple he builds it not literally in his own image, but according to the laws of his own being, and there are correspondences not altogether fanciful between the animate body of flesh and the inanimate body of stone.

From The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture (1910)

Music creative inspo

🎀 𝕕𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕞𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕦𝕒𝕝 🎀

A book title that stayed with me:

If in London don’t miss an exhibition by Julie Mehretu at White Cube Bermondsey through 5 Nov.

Did you know that one’s socialization is relevant in the context of pain perception? Particularly, religious socialization.

In a study conducted to measure changes in pain perception among devout Catholics, (using atheists as the control group), when shown a picture of the Virgin Mary before and during an electrically applied pain stimulus, Catholics showed a significant reduction in pain.

In sum, Catholics’ identification with the suffering Virgin Mary eased their pain. Religious belief can help relieve pain.

The result is very promising and shows huge potential only if the scientific community could systematically activate it in pain therapy. But religion is a controversial topic in public debate…

cosmic dance

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