(023 a) ON REGULATION, Korčula, SSSStuttering
A Post Scriptum to urbophilia post 023
this is the longest urbophilia post . . . with less words and much, much more images than in any of my previous posts; it could have been shorter but that would mean to cut . . . beauty; below are as many 55 images! that goes against the compactness, efficiency, short attention span that rules the digital media of today ... and, deliberately so; the visual/textual play below summarises my most recent experiences in/of Korčula, the places and moments there which trigger something in me; it seeks to answer a broader urbophilia question: how to let images narrate, words illustrate?
please enjoy!
_ _ _ to let images narrate, we still need key words and the way of organising them; the easiest way to (not) structure and let images “talk” is to organise them by subject, by thought (that struck there, then); captured thoughts can be structured in many ways, in almost any way; to avoid any prejudice, I have decided to . . . play; below are the photos (taken without any specific aim, responding to an urge to capture the place, a moment); I noted down only the dominant presence, that of the sea, the sky, a stone, particular types of spaces, and the statute . . . something that felt special (to me, at a singular moment, there); I kept on listing those words and then . . . wait!
a realisation that besides the location (Korčula itself) all of my keywords Start with letter S! . . . Sea . . . Sky . . . Stone . . . Spaces . . . Statute . . . Something Singular . . .
I kept on playing with words and, as good play does, my game started leading me;
I kept on playing with words (in this language, which is neither that of Korčula, nor mine) and, in my, by now Somewhat Sarcastic Structuring System, there was indeed Something Special with that letter S
I have kept on playing (not wanting to, in any way, banalise Perec’s mind-blowingly deep OuLiPo play with tragic absence of the letter E in his haunting La disparation /translated to English as A void! < click, See the Sources)
I have kept on playing my Silly game, Seriously S S S Stuttering, to Situate my thoughts in/of that Space . . . Sea Sky Stone Space Statute were the first to anchor my experiences of that place, now, as many times before, during those long Slow, Suny, Serene, Summers Spent at Pelješac, Korčula and the Strait between them; Seeking (and finding) Something Substantial, in them, to me (in me), generated by those Situations there was a Strong Sense of Satisfaction, of Synergies, Syntheses, Symphonies that only youth can compose; many of those “Syn–” words (from Ancient Greek σύν), Significantly referring to being "together with”, “alike” “along with”, (a homophone “Sin” included); Sophia . . . Statute . . . that urbanistic documents which treasure (urban) wisdom in principles which, being profoundly human(e), never age; the lessons for my first research passion, bioclimatic design embedded in that Stone, in those Streets, Squares, there; Something Special yet Simple, “ordinary”, Simply cannot be designed; it needs to be Sought, Spotted and allowed (to happen); (the key word of that old project or mine was beautifully – untranslatable; decades later “untranslatability” became the key work in my academic Search, thus re-Search)
S S S S . . . instead of Summary, here only Stuttering Several leftovers, a Sort of Post Scriptum within the Post Scriptum (alphabetically Structured – please, you try to play and place them): Scylla (with, or without Charybdis), Silhouette, Singing, Skyline, Songs, Sonnets, Spy, Strophe, Summers, Swimming, Sympathies . . . and Several Significant names (none of which starting with S !!!) which make Korčula Somehow feel mine: Lola, Eva, Ferda, Rajko, Kornelia, Christiane, Car, Šef, Ilija, Joe, Petra, Andreas . . . Mira . . . Fitzroy, Dara, Mara . . . that could go on, and on]
>>> let’s Start . . . below are 55 images Structured alphabetically, with Simplest annotationS
_ _ _
Screen, Stone
Screen, Stone too
Sea, Splash
Sea, Strait
Sea, Surrounding
Sea, Sunset
Sealed
Self, Skyline, Structure
Self, Same, (yet never) the Same
Serenity
Shade
Shadow, day
Shadow, night
Shape
Shaping
Shelter
Shut
Sight
Sign
Silence, its Sound
Silhouette, Korčula
Silhouette, Pelješac, the Straits
Sketching, Serenity
Sign
Sky
Sleep
Slope, Stairs
Snore
Something ... almost Secret
Sacrilege (was it?)
Sadness
Signed, Someone
Sky, Sacred
Soup
Span
Span, across the Street
Span, Same type
Spectacles, urban
Spectacles, two/too
Square, Selfies
Spolia
Spy
Stairs, Simple
Stairs, Spectacular
Statute, Street name
Stitched
Stone
Stone, too
Street, as if carved through
Street, Spanned
Sunset
Sunset, another one
Sunset, yet another one
Straights, with Orebić on the other Side
Surprise(d)
Swimming pool (for Zdena)
Symphony, Stone
. . . walls, touch, memory, my old discovery not there any more – missing (no S)
THE END 終
P.S. (as you would expect . . . after the end, and within another Post Scriptum)
_ _ _ in Korčula, I find an undeniable, undefinable (sense of the) quality of life; an irreducible, palpable quality; in shortest: Korčula is beautiful! for centuries, there is a consensus about that; and that is not only about an undeniable beauty of nature, but also about the beauty of urban spaces and practices; yes, the practices of urban life can be beautiful; that used to be called . . . urbanity; those practices are constantly produced in, and productive of that particular space, making it a unique place, the one (Korčula) and the many (of its expressions of everyday life) . . .
>>> that brings us back to our urbophilia task, the task of thinking – (about) the meaning of words;
questions: what is beautiful? what the beauty is?
as captured by Georges Perec’s Espèces d'espaces, shadowed by my infraordinary Tokyo, the right to the city
_ _ _ Korčula . . . as spaces and times, places and moments, as when the Teatro del Mondo passed by (twice); what when an evident beauty gets normalised, accepted as an ordinary condition, taken for granted?
>>> questionS > > > how to normalise the extraordinary?
> > > how to have it produced and elevated, normalised into the realm of infraordinary, everyday life, lived?
CUT!
(brutally)
_ _ _
N.B. re. my theme, (im)possibility of translation, here; alas, the fun I was having here is all in a “wrong” language, in lingua franca of this confused era (click to see more at urbophilia post 003); the game I’ve played does not work in my language (the language into which I was born, which does not exist any more anyway); these Silly Stutters work only in this global communication tool, in a mongrel language in which I, for decades now, live; yet another confirmation (albeit a sad one to me) that only lived situations have the capacity to generate true expression.
_ _ _