Category: Site_visit

28 Sep 2024, Petrarca’s Mont Ventoux

Posted on Posted in Site_visit

28.9.2024, Petrarca’s Mont Ventoux

Mont Ventoux, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Ventoux: … located some 20 km … northeast of Carpentras … At 1,910 m … the highest mountain in the region … The road over the mountain is often closed due to high winds … The top of the mountain is bare limestone without vegetation or trees, which makes the mountain’s barren peak appear from a distance to be snow-capped all year round … Although the hill was probably climbed in prehistoric times, the first recorded ascent was by Jean Buridan, who, on his way to … Avignon before the year 1334, climbed Mont Ventoux “in order to make some meteorological observations” … The Italian poet Petrarch wrote a possibly fictional account of an ascent accompanied by his brother on 26 April 1336 …

Mont Ventoux, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Ventoux: … Über die Region hinaus populär wurde der Mont Ventoux nach der Besteigung … durch Francesco Petrarca … Der Gipfel ist einer der wenigen Orte, von denen man bei sehr gutem Wetter gleichzeitig das Mittelmeer und die höchsten Gipfel der Alpen und der Pyrenäen sehen kann … Schon von den Kelten … vermutlich als Sitz einer Windgottheit verehrt, unter anderem zeugen Artefakte wie kleine Tontrompeten von dem Kult … In einem auf den 26. April 1336 datierten Brief … auf Latein verfasst … erzählt … Francesco Petrarca, wie er zusammen mit seinem Bruder den Mont Ventoux bestieg … gilt … als Ausdruck einer neuen Natur- und Landschaftserfahrung, bei der sich ästhetische und kontemplative Sichtweisen … verbinden … heute von einigen Forschern als der Schlüsselmoment an der Schwelle vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit angesehen. Die Schilderung dieser Besteigung wäre in dieser 1860 von Jacob Burckhardt begründeten Lesart auch als Geburtsstunde des Alpinismus … anzusehen, da hier das Bergsteigen erstmals als Selbstzweck dargestellt würde: „Den höchsten Berg dieser Gegend, den man nicht unverdient Ventosus, den Windumbrausten, nennt, habe ich am heutigen Tage bestiegen, einzig von der Begierde getrieben, diese ungewöhnliche Höhenregion mit eigenen Augen zu sehen“ … Auch … Frédéric Mistral … bestieg den Mont Ventoux, dem französischen Universalgelehrten Jean-Henri Fabre diente der Berg als biologisches Freilandlabor … vor seiner Haustür …

Cf.: 26 Apr 2016, 680 years: Petrarca and Mt. Ventoux

28 Sep 2024, Aix-en-Provence: Merovingian baptistery and Cézanne’s Mt. Sainte-Victoire

Posted on Posted in Site_visit

28.9.2024, Aix-en-Provence: Merovingian baptistery and Cézanne’s Mt. Sainte-Victoire

Aix-en-Provence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aix-en-Provence: … Aquae Sextiae … founded in 123 BC … In 102 BC its vicinity was the scene of the Battle of Aquae Sextiae, where the Romans under Gaius Marius defeated the Ambrones and Teutones … during the Middle Ages … the capital of Provence …

Cathédrale Saint Sauveur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aix_Cathedral: … built on the site of the 1st-century Roman forum of Aix … includes Romanesque, Gothic and Neo-Gothic elements, as well as Roman columns and parts of the baptistery from a 6th-century Christian church … Only the octagonal baptismal pool and the lower part of the walls remain from that period. The other walls and the dome were rebuilt in the Renaissance … The columns are probably from a Roman temple that stood on the same site …

Mont Sainte-Victoire, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montagne_Sainte-Victoire: … ein Kalksteingebirge im Süden der Provence, das sich von nahe Aix en Provence über 18 Kilometer nach Osten erstreckt … höchste Erhebung … mit 1.011 Metern der … Pic des Mouches. Das Gebirge wurde bekannt durch … Paul Cézanne, der es von seinem nah gelegenen … im Norden von Aix-en-Provence sehen konnte und es siebenundachtzig Mal malte …

Bill Morgan (2015): The Beats abroad. City Lights Publishers, San Francisco, p.41: „In April 1957 Jack Kerouac … visited the Cathédrale Saint Sauveur [34, Place des Martyrs-de-la-Résistance] … The sixth-century Merovingian baptistery that he describes is still there … In 1961, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky visited Aix-en-Provence in order to absorb the beautiful view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, which figures prominently in the work of Paul Cézanne … Kenneth Rexroth … who was an early … friend oft he Beat writers … married … Marthe Larsen in Aix-en-Provence in 1949. The newlyweds drank grog in the Deux Garcons [53, cours Mirabeau] …“

21-25 Sep 2024, Sanary-sur-Mer with Parcours de Mémoire: Exiled writers and other artists

Posted on Posted in Exhibition_visit, Site_visit

21.-25.9.2024, Sanary-sur-Mer with Parcours de Mémoire: Exiled writers and other artists

Sanary-sur-Mer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanary-sur-Mer:  a commune … in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, … 49 km … southeast of Marseille … Literary Sanary: With the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s, a great number of German writers and intellectuals left Germany and settled here … Patronised by Jean Cocteau and his coterie, Sanary had already drawn Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World at Villa Huley, … and his wife, Maria; they attracted other English visitors … The German expatriates clustered around Thomas Mann and his large family … Ludwig Marcuse in his book “Mein Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert” (p. 160) wrote about Sanary: “Wir wohnten im Paradies – notgedrungen“, meaning “We lived in paradise – against our will”. “If one lives in exile,” wrote Hermann Kesten, “The café becomes at once the family home, the nation, church and parliament, a desert and a place of pilgrimage, cradle of illusions and their cemetery… In exile, the café is the one place where life goes on.” With the declaration of war in 1939, the French government treated these exiles as enemy aliens and interned some of them in camps …, and eventually some were sent to Auschwitz. After the liberation of France, the whole episode went ignored until the 1990s when … a commemorative plaque was unveiled, and literary itineraries were signposted …

Exilpoetik in Sanary-sur-Mer, https://www.sanary-tourisme.com/en/discover-sanary/history-and-heritage/sanary-land-of-exile/: It was not without a touch of humour that the journalist Ludwig Marcuse, who lived in Sanary, took the liberty of awarding the commune the honorary title of „world capital of artistic and literary exile“.

Parcours de Mémoire: Sur les pas des exilés à Sanary / Following the steps of the exiled writers [and other artists] / Auf den Spuren der Exil-Schriftsteller [und anderer Künstler]. Selected persons: Hans Siemsen, Erich Klossowski, Friedrich Wolf, Wilhelm Herzog, Walter Bondy, Alma Malher & Franz Werfel, Bruno Franck, Thomas Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Lion Feuchtwanger (2 Standorte), René Schickele, Sybille Bedford. Not exiled, but in touch with those: Aldous Huxley. Significant places: Hôtel de la Tour; les cafés du port.

16-19 Sep 2024, ♣ Venezia incl. Biennale Arte, Kentridge, (Beat) poetry

Posted on Posted in Exhibition_visit, Horticulture, Site_visit

16.-19.9.2024, Venezia incl. Biennale Arte, Kentridge, (Beat) poetry

Biennale Arte 2024, 20.4.-24.11 2024, www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024: 60th International Art Exhibition: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere“. Sede Giardini / Giardini venue; Sede Arsenale / Arsenale venue.

Adriano Pedrosa (curator): “Artists have always traveled and moved about through cities, countries and continents. The Biennale Arte 2024’s primary focus is … artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, or refugees”.

Brochure: „This Biennale Arte … hosts samples of marginalised, excluded, oppressed beauty, erased by the dominant matrices of geo-thinking. The interlacing themes … – the different, the foreigner, the journey, integration – will reverberate nowhere better than in the … ever-renewed waters of the lagoon city. Once again Venice – over the centuries an open cradle of knowledge and communication between peoples, ethnicities, religions – is the natural forum in which to marshal new points of view …“

National participations, www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/national-participations:

  • USA, Jeffrey Gibson: „the space in which to place me“ …
  • Germany: Thresholds. www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/germany: „Every moment is a threshold between the vanishing past and an unclear future. This … applies equally to everyone. For those affected by migration, however, it is a fundamental three-dimensional and bodily experience … the German contribution explores history and the future in three scenarios … the contribution engages in building a bridge to another location outside the Giardini: the island of La Certosa. Here the artists Michael Akstaller, Nicole L’Huillier, Robert Lippok, and Jan St. Werner create a resonant space with works that focus on the significance of the moment of temporal and spatial transition …

In parallel to the Biennale: William Kentridge: Self-portrait as a coffe-pot. An exhibition curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, Venice. www.arsenale.com/downloads/AI_Web_material_Kentridge/AI_2024_Booklet_Kentridge.pdf: „This series of nine, thirty-minute episodes, is an experiment in embodiment and phenomenological experience in the digital age, and a reflection on what might happen in the brain and in the studio of an artist today. Filming of the series began during the first lockdown of the 2020–22 COVID-19 pandemic in Kentridge’s Johannesburg studio and continued in its aftermath …“ e.g.: Episode 4, Finding one’s fate; Episode 5, As if; Episode 6, Harvest of devotion.

Bill Morgan (2015): The Beats abroad. City Lights Publishers, San Francisco, p.59: „In the fall of 1954, … Alan Ansen …decided to settle in Venice … He hosted many of the Beats and introduced them to his Venice friends … (p.60) Ansen was living in the the top-floor apartment at 3219 Calle Carrozze … 1957 … Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky … arrived in Venice for a visit … Ansen was mortified when Ginsberg and Orlovsky argued at a dinner given for Peggy Guggenheim and began tossing a wet towel back and forth across the table … This got Allen and Peter blackballed from Guggenheim’s company… Ansen … composed … The return from Greece, to celebrate Peggy Guggenheim’s sixty-first birthday … It was performed … at her palazzo … now the Peggy Guggenheim collection Dorsoduro, 701 … (p.61) In … 1967 Allen Ginsberg went to Venice for the sole purpose of visiting … Ezra Pound … Pond’s house at 252 Calle Querini … In 1995 Ginsberg was back in Venice again, … for the opening of an exhibition of his photography displayed at the Venice Biennial …

Venice and ist Lagoon, https://unescoworld.com/heritage/venice-and-its-lagoon/: „Founded in the 5th century and spread over 118 small islands, Venice became a major maritime power in the 10th century. The whole city is an extraordinary architectural masterpiece in which even the smallest building contains works by some of the world’s greatest artists …“

16 Sep 2024, ♣ Sistiana, Rilke trail & Duino Cliffs Nature Reserve – Duino castle – Miramare castle

Posted on Posted in Horticulture, Site_visit

16.9.2024, Sistiana, Rilke trail & Duino Cliffs Nature Reserve – Duino castle – Miramare castle

Sistiana: Rilke trail, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rilke_trail: … Italian: Sentiero Rilke … providing a scenic view of the Gulf of Trieste … connects the villages of Duino and Sistiana … For a long time the trail was abandoned but in 1987 it was restored by the Province of Trieste …

Sistiana: Duino Cliffs Regional Nature Reserve, Information plate: „… includes a steep limestone cliff, a sea band and a narrow band of the Carso plateau … Central European, Illyrian-Balkan and Mediterranean animal and plant species live here … The most important plant of the Reserve is Centaurea kartschiana. The Duino Cliffs are its only world location … The white limestone rock is the main feature of the Reserve… Along the cliff …, running alongside the remains of military emplacements, winds the Rilke path …

Duino castle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duino_Castle: … a fourteenth-century fortification located in the village of Duino, … on the cliffs overlooking the Gulf of Trieste … The ruins of an older castle built in the eleventh century by the Patriarch of Aquileia are located on the grounds … Thurn und Taxis … Alexander and Marie supported artists and writers, including Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. While a guest of Princess Marie in … 1912, Rilke began to write his Duino Elegies, a collection of ten … philosophical and mystical poems …

Miramare castle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miramare_Castle:  … a 19th-century castle direct on the Gulf of Trieste … It was built from 1856 to 1860 for Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian and his wife, Charlotte of Belgium, later Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and Empress Carlota of Mexico … The castle’s grounds include an extensive cliff and seashore park … The grounds were completely re-landscaped to feature numerous tropical species of trees and plants …