The Xiuhmolpilli or Ceremony of the New Firewas a ritual performed the last day of every cycle of the Aztec calendar (52 years) to save the world from destruction. All fires in the Aztec realm were put out and everyone looked towards the summit of the Huixachtla volcano, where priests from the fire cult of Huehueteotl sacrificed a man, placing a firedrill on his chest; the resulting bonfire marked the New Calendar Round. Torches were carried then from the bonfires to the temples in Tenochtitlan and a new Cycle would start with the certainty that the world was safe. The last ceremony of the New Fire was performed in 1507, when became forbidden by the Spanish conquerors.
Huehueteotl, or Old God in Nahuatl, a mesoamerican deity figuring in the pantheons of pre-columbian cultures and associated to fire, was portrayed by the Aztecs as a very old man, hunched over with a wrinkled face and a toothless mouth, who carries a large brazier over his head.
I found this images on the web and I thought you might like them. These are viking lighters. Unfortunately I don’t have more information about them.
I’ve had a lot of ideas and I’ll send you tomorrow some drafts of what I’d like to make. We’ll look for a contact point between our objects and thoughts to produce a first spark.
I’m particularly interested in objects that create comunication with others persons, that provoke interactivity and have a symbolic sense. There are not often jewel that you can use for gala night…
I have sought inspiration in Lampião and Maria Bonita, a very famous couple of brazilian bandits ( in the tradition of R0bin of Sherwood)
Look what I found on the web…
“Cangaço is the name given to a form of “social banditry” in the Nordeste of Brazil in late 19th and early 20th centuries. This region of Brazil is known for its aridness and hardships, and in a form of reaction against the domination of the land owners, the government and the European colonizers, many men and women decided to become nomadic bandits, roaming the sertões, seeking money, food, and revenge.”
Dear Chequita, I am sorry you had to wait now for me.
After the intense period of the work with the triennial I got an eye infection. Less computer was necessary, luckily it’s almost over, back in track eventually.
First, can you please post the pictures of the small talismans you told me.
I read your post about little presents your were thinking to make. Beautiful thought. You had Christmas in your mind I suppose? For me Christmas is a strange time, we have always celebrated it in our family, even at the time it was forbidden(when we belonged to the happy family of USSR )- we celebrated it behind heavy curtains. Very long time it was of course the favorite event of the year, just next to my birthday when one could expect number of presents. Well soon the presents turned to more practical then fun things(as a teenager I remember of getting 10 pair set of ugly but warm underpants from granny and two granny like nightgowns from my mum, uh).
Even now we mostly give within my family only practical things. Every year I think of making something special, but the time passes before I ever have a chance.
When my grandfather died this Spring I was desperately trying to remember did I ever received something from him what I could treasure except all the memories? Then I remembered one story. When I turned 16 he and his wife wanted to give me something special I could keep for a long time. but at the time I was crazy about swimming and diving so when we drove to shopping center and I saw green rubber flippers and instead of jewellery, dress or a book I got them. This shows how generous he was, I am sure he thought it was ridiculous from me, but he respected my wish. I guess therefore it would be really nice to receive surprise presents, like you are planning.
When I am traveling I love visiting flee markets and I try to purchase small gifts from there. (On the picture flee market in Brussels).
Dear Chequita, I was wondering that are these the themes you would like to work further for the Gray area? Or do you have some other things in mind?
Lately I lost a dear friend and soaked down to a GREY AREA…mainly first because of the distance we have between us.
From Finland to Munich the everyday stuff disappears. Well and now the distance is even greater.
During this difficult time I learned to see many shades of grey. Black and White are the ultimates, but there is such a beauty inbetween. Level of Motions. Earlier moment s in life really become nostalgic. Even back then the world outside seemed exaiting and rather wanted…
I was not able to go to funeral either. But we made our own funeral here in the mountain close by Munich. New traditions arise. It was very beautiful day! Beautiful moment! Traditions arise from circumstances we have. And vise versa aswell, perhaps!
YES! And now that we have went underground…and I am looking forward receiving the material from you so I can start working….
I took some pictures in Valdivia, I was there (again!) to participate in a barter fair. It was in the old train station, that now it’s rusty and abandoned.
I’ve been thinking a lot in this project and sketching what I am up to make. This reflective process it as been very profiting to me but I regret I didn’t get you more participative on my posts. I wonder what your plans of work for this project are . Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
view on "Segredos e Reliquias" from Teresa Pavão, LH 2009
Today a group of students from the jewelry department of Ar.Co got a guiding tour by the ceramicist and textile artist Teresa Pavão to her exhibition “Segredos e Reliquias” present at the Museum Ricardo Espirito Santo in Lisbon.
I took the chance and joined in, met Dani and other friends, took some photos and got the feeling I was traveling. Traveling because once you enter that museum you feel like being transported to another time. A time where patterns reign.
Patterns overlap patterns, light-shade, miniatures-details. The walls full of paintings become like pages of an album. The paintings themselves portrait the spirit of the specific period. Still-lifes, ships at rough sea, mise en scène of ideals.
Fabrics matching tiles, tiles matching wallpapers, wallpapers matching curtains, curtains matching carpets, carpets matching ceramics, ceramics matching rituals, rituals matching moments, moments matching mentalities, mentalities matching an epoch. Me, the present matching with the past. A line dividing the visitors and the museum’s content. Borderline of two states of mind. A journey lodged in between.
Dear Eduardo
This is a nice surprise to find your first post to me. I just entered the blog because I want to show you a picture of something I just found in the supermarket when I was buying stuff for dinner. I’ll show you at the end of this post.
I smiled, reading you were walking the canals in Amsterdam ending up at the same houses you passed before during your walk, because something similar happened to me when I came to live here in 1983. I remember the first months when I had to go somewhere on my bicycle, I first went to the street I had to be in and then I started looking for the right number of the house. Only after months I learned that I often cycled very long routes this way, because the canals are circular indeed. It is much easier and faster(!) following the smaller streets in between the canals, like the the spokes in a wheel. So yes, very familiar to me in that period this city was very new to me as well.
I happen to have visited your city too, many years ago. It caught my attention to read that you also are living in a place where the people (re)claimed land from the water. Where ever you come: all over the world people seem to know that the Netherlands is for the large part a manmade country and we are living under sea level, on the bottom of what once used to sea. I did not know Mexico City is also built where water, a lake, used to be.
We all have a certain idea about a place before we go there for the first time. And the photo I attach to this post has to do with that in a way. A lot of it is based on what we learned by reading about the particular country, about what you learned at school. On what the travel magazines want to show us. Usually a very bright and ideal image of the country. Some of these prefab ideas may contribute to an even foggier grey when walking that particular area of the world or when leaving the beaten tracks.
It made me smile when I saw this in the supermarket. It immediately made me think of our contact here in the blog. What you see is a foil pack with three packets of cigarettes. Well, cigarettes made of chocolate, meant as a present for children. The fifth of December we celebrate the anniversary of Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas), the patron saint of children. These weeks children can leave their shoes in front of the fireplace and Sinterklaas puts sweets and small presents in them during the night.
We have been good boys by starting posting to one another, so lets continue and now smoke a cigarette together. Funny to find that package of “Mexico” and that of “Amsterdam” today, next to eachother. Do they really show us our countries?
Best wishes Eduardo, hope to hear from you, Peter
I’m so sorry for what happened!
I never have been in a situation like this but I can imagine a little bit what is going on with you. I understand your silence and emptiness.
Already before I went to Brazil I took some more pictures here in Berlin and I will attach them to this mail.
It is as usual about these empty walls, which tells a lot about what could be behind, but in the same moment they let it open to the observer to imagine whatever he or she wants to see behind.
Where are you living in the moment and do you also have walls like these? Perhaps you can make photos of them as well, I’m curious how they look over there.
And did you start already with material? I’m really curious what you are doing!
Brazil was great!! I really love to be there. It is such a different way of living. People seem to be happier even if they are poorer.
I’m so fascinated by these favelas, their structure, the material from which they are build and how they are build. Some look better build, more stable and organized others are incredible. I will attach a photo from one of them as well.
I send you all my best wishes and lets try to fill this emptiness,
warm regards, Karin
I love the first image you posted under ‘how to make fire’. I love the prehistoric tools, things, stones, rocks, objects (all filled with purpose with the benefit of making fire). Makes me wonder if we could make jewellery that can actually be utilized to make fire, but in the wrapped prehistoric kind of way, instead of a matchbox and match necklace, even though that would work too….
today a lot of people asked me if I had something special for the special holliday coming up.
I though about the “holy spirit” a lot of us refer to during these days. So now I am making porcelain hearts which contain some holy thoughts. Thoughts and little ways of help everybody searches for whenever the world seems to be falling down around us.
I saw the most beautiful luck puppets of all time inspiring. I wonder do we really need something to give us that bit of power when we need it?
Nice pics and thoughts on fiery work (you are a creative ball of fire). I am not sure what to do, make, think exactly. I think I will start soon (I always say this and I mean it, yet I do not work on creative things a lot anymore. It is like a wall exists between me and creativity and I somehow need to respect that dull-large-stagnant-energy-block). But I like fire, it feels appropriate and suitable. Maybe I will start with burning things I do not like to transform them and to see what happens!
I am glad about that Dani! Any gesture, any thought, any impression you share inspires me too! And that’s all about isn’t it?
Here I am quoting an extract of Kertu Tuberg text for ‘Chroma/Monochroma’.
Nomad Jewellery
Contemporary jewellery carries the philosophy of travelling in itself. The one who makes jewellery is travelling, the one who wears it is travelling, and the one who notices it is travelling. Paths are different and travellers are differents, but at some point they all have recognised their resting place or their home in jewellery. They have discovered something that accords with their nature.
Querido Peter aquí estoy viéndote y leyendo tu correo.
Me agrada que podamos platicar y conocernos en este trayecto , pensando sobre estos procesos globales e individuales de migración, joyería, vivir en nuestras ciudades, etc.
Es gracioso imaginar lo que sucede fuera de la foto ¿que es lo que va a pasar? ¿Qué paso? Ese presente.
Muy saludable viajar y recargar energías para continuar trabajando y creando.
Hace mucho tiempo estuve unos días en Ámsterdam, en el centro de la ciudad, fue divertido caminar y vivir ese intrincado espacio. Recuerdo que era engañoso caminar a un lado de los canales sin atención, platicando y no sintiendo la circularidad del camino y quedar sorprendido al rencontrar casas que ya habían pasado, también caminar hacia otra dirección y desorientarse por creer que era la calle por la cual se debería ir.Había mucha gente extranjera viajando en el verano.
Donde vivo, la Ciudad de México, es un lugar muy particular que se reforma constantemente. Algunas veces con la pena de perder maneras muy especiales de resolver problemas de la vida. Asombroso construir una ciudad sobre algunos lagos situados a 2240 metros sobre el nivel del mar. En el verano es aquí cuando la humedad del Océano Atlántico se condensa y cae lloviendo tanto que el lago permanece aun en algún sentido. Si sales afuera de este lugar elevado, durante este período, hacia el campo, te puedes encontrar sembradíos sin agua. dentro de este bello país México, hay muchos tipos de climas, el relieve geográfico y su posición específica dentro de la Tierra son muy peculiares.
Para mi trabajar y hacer joyería, en ocasiones es como viajar hacia otro espacio y tiempo , tan diferente como cambiar de escala y hacer procesos que te regresan a practicas apartadas de la secuencia común de estos días , mucho de la emoción que me provoca, es vivir esta diferente secuencia para la creación de objetos.
Peter que estés muy bien, que gusto ver tu correo , hasta pronto . Saludos
Dear Peter, here I’m, seeing and reading your post
I’m glad that we could talk and by the way know each other, thinking about these global and individual processes of migration, jewelry, living in our cities, etc.
It’s witty to imagine what it happens out the photo, what its going to be? What it was? That present.
Very healthy to travel and recharge energies to continue working and creating
Much time ago I stay a few days in Amsterdam .At the center of the city, it was amuse to walk and live that intricate space. I remember that was deceitful to walk near the channels with out attention, talking, and with out feeling the circularity of the way ,being surprise to find again houses that I all ready past, also, turning to another direction and be confuse because I believe that was the street to will go through.There were a lot of foreign people traveling in summer.
Where I live, Mexico City is a very particular place reformed constantly, some times with the sorrow of loosing very special manners of resolve living problems. Amazing to build a city on the top of some lakes situated at 2240 meters upon the level of the sea. Here is in the summer, when the humidity of the Atlantic Ocean is condense and fall raining sow much ,that the lakes still here in a way. If you go out of this high place, during this period, to the country, you can find there are fields with out water. Inside this beautiful country, Mexico , there are many types of climates, his geographic relief and the specific position on earth are very peculiar.
For me to work and made jewelry in occasions is like to travel to another space and time , sow different as to change the scale and doing process that returns you to apart practices of the common sequence of this days ,much of the emotion that provokes me ,is to live this different sequence for the creation of the object.
Peter, be very well, I´m glad to see your post. Till soon . Greetings
I could not found anything better to introduce myself into this open blog around + about the Ultrabarroc exhibition at the Grey Area symposium.
My dialogue is with Heleno Bernardi, a Brazilian artist, from Ouro Fino in Minas, who lives in Rio de Janeiro.
The image I attached shows the piece “The Narrow Gap Which Separates Amiability from Satiety” from the Chafes series Nocturne at Klabin Home (Foundation) in Rio de Janeiro.
This piece was made in Portugal and has travel to Brazil to “colonized” the house of Eva or to be colonized by Klabin Bedroom… “this type of projects, which has got to do with the occupation of a house which had been used and inhabited by other people, puzzles me…..it is fascinating to be able to put pieces of contemporary art in a habitat marked by people, where their sores are present; their small injuries were left behind. These small fissures are present in the landscape, not in a way in which they seem to be contemporary art neither by any form of contrast.. However. On the other way around, using the language nearly mimetic, in which the things which had already been there seem new and got integrated in it: a mimetism with landscape of the time” *
“Eva Klabin’s Bedroom impresses by its magnificence and aristocratic refinement. The decoration is light containing a smaller number of pieces that the other rooms of the house, and the ash-bluish shade of the walls creates a sensation of restfulness. The imposing gold bed from Italian Baroque was strategically placed at the centre of the room, and immediately attracts the attention of whoever enters it. In front of the bed, we see the tapestry card Boys Fishing, by Italian Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (17th century), that Eva Klabin liked to appreciated when she woke up, around 4 pm.”**
“Eva Klabin was born in S.Paulo, her parents were Lithuanian immigrants of Jewish descent, which arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century, as so many other immigrants fleeing from Europe in search of a new life.”** and, I can not found a better example of someone who has colonize and have been colonized throughout so many places and cultures. Her home, who now became a Foundation shows her fantastic collection of objects that she took from all over the places she lived and travelled.
As mention on the catalogue of her foundation:
“The art works held at this museum are intimately connected to a perspective that is both universal and personal, of whom created it during her life and destined it as a permanent collection of the city of Rio de Janeiro and of Brazil.”**
“Eva Klabin’s life only has a meaning for us, today, because she left this collection gathered in the house where she chose to live. Eva Klabin knew that her house, when transformed into a museum, would be a metaphor for her existence.”**
We all travel. We all colonize. We all contaminate places. Ambiences. People. Its is part of our nature to colonize and to be colonized, we can’t avoid it.
I love this tangent border where we stay, still in our privacy…so close to the outside world.
This iron. Black. Heavy and light piece, it floats on this chaise long, has “she” belongs to this place since always, even if it is a totally stranger, it belongs, it is part of. It shows our strengths and our vulnerability.
That encounter translates that tangent line. That encounter that we can not understand if it is natural or forced. That encounter emphasise the dichotomy of being together and being alone.
I like the masculine and the feminine side of the sculpture.
Eva Klabin was living permanently at night. Sleeping day time and doing all her duties during the evening and along the night. Organizing all her encounters after 1,2, or 3 am.
Well here I am, feeling so close, it is almost five and I have being doing through the night everything I could not find the way and the possibility of doing during the past day.
I like the quietness, the silence, the night rumours, the solitude, the nocturne side… thankfull to Rui work and words for helping me to translate my thoughts and introduce myself to this blog and to Heleno Bernardi!…in order to be colonized and to colonize.
Cristina
* Rui Chafes , Breathing Project, Nocturne, Rio de Janeiro , 2008
**Márcio Doctors, The Eva Klabin Collection, Rio de Janeiro.
