Notes on Jean Baudrillard's 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' (Part 2: Sections VI - XII)

Cover of the paperback edition 

(Seagull Books, 2016)

  

This is a continuation of a post the first part of which can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

VI.

 

The human subject - that product of power, knowledge, and history - with its free-willing moral agency, is also, says Baudrillard, disappearing today, but leaving "its ghost behind, its narcissistic double, more or less as the Cat left its grin hovering" [27].

 

Freed from an actual subject, this ectoplasmic remnant of subjectivity is to be found everywhere today (just like sexuality, freed from the biological reality of sex, is found everywhere but in bodies); enveloping and transforming everything; remaking the world in its own image, ensuring that there's no outside, no otherness, no objective world.  

 

Consciousness has been smashed to smithereens and dispersed into "all the interstices of reality" [28] producing a smart world of interconnected systems and artificial intelligence; a digital utopia. And in such a world, who needs human subjects in the old-fashioned sense? They have become superfluous and so may as well disappear ...

 

 

VII. 

 

But again the question will be raised: have there not been some positive disappearances? Certain diseases, for example, and other threats to human health and safety. 

 

Well, yes, that's true - although it should be remembered that things we thought had gone for good often come back with a vengeance; "we know", writes Baudrillard, "that everything repressed or eliminated [...] results in a malign, viral infiltration of the social and individual body" [30-31] sooner or later.  

 

Disappearance is never the end of the matter any more than appearance is the beginning of the matter: things come and go and eternally return and life itself is nothing other than this vital game of appearance, disappearance, and reappearance [g].

 

 

VIII. 

 

Moving on, Baudrillard brings the discussion around to the image, behind which, he says, something has always and already disappeared: "And that is the source of its fascination" [32]. 

 

In other words, it's not virtual reality that excites us - is anything more boring at last? - it's the fact that behind it lies a vital dimenson of existence, albeit one that is withdrawn and concealed. It's the real - or, more precisely, the disappearance of the real - that excites everyone. 

 

(Baudrillard often seems at pains to stress the total ambiguity of his own position on this issue, which throws up paradox after paradox and "cannot, in any way, be resolved" [32].) 

 

 

IX. 

 

The destiny of the image is to make the revolutionary move from the analogical to the digital. Baudrillard thinks of this as an irresistible process which leads to a world which "no longer has need of us, nor of our representation" [34]; for when "software wins out over the eye" [37] who needs the photographer?  

 

When the photograph is liberated "from both the negative and the real world" [34], this has consequences for objects too; who needs them to be present when they can now be digitally generated (and erased) by AI? 

 

Baudrillard writes:

 

"The traditional photograph is an image produced by the world, which, thanks to the medium of film, still involves a dimension of representation. The digital image is an image that comes straight out of the screen ..." [ 37] [h] and lacks punctual exactitude. 

 

Again, for anyone who cares about the art of photography - "conceived as the convergence of the light from the object with the light from the gaze" [38] - this is not merely an advance in technology, it's a disaster; "the sophistication of the play of presence and absence, of appearance and disappearance" [38] is abolished with the arrival of the digital age. 

 

The world - "and our vision of the world" [39] - is changed forever. It seems you cannot liberate photography via digitalisation, only destroy it with violence inflicted upon the "sovereignty of images" [59], subjecting them to a single perspective.   

 

Now, non-photographers might shrug their shoulders and ask so what. But what is happening in the world of photography is "just one tiny example of what is happening on a massive scale in all fields [...] The same destiny of digitalisation looms over the world of the mind and the whole range of thought" [39-40], so philosophers had better beware too!

 

 

X. 

 

When you replace the "entire symbolic articulation of language" [40] with an endless flow of information, then there are no silences or spaces suspended between illusion and reality in which to pause and think. 

 

Just as photography is about more than the proliferation and circulation of images, thinking is about more than word processing and fact checking - and the further we advance in the direction of digitalisation the further we shall be from "the secret - and the pleasure - of both" [43]. 

 

The brain is not a type of computer. And AI is not a form of thinking and knows nothing of the intelligence of evil [i]. 

 

 

XI. 

 

Should we save silence? 

 

Obviously, as someone who has argued that silence, stillness, secrecy, and shadows should be central to the practice of occultism in an age of transparency - click here - I'm going to answer yes to this question. 

 

But I also think we should preserve the absence; i.e., the nothingness that lies at the heart of the world and which is "as essential to life as are air and wind to the flight of the dove" [j]. 

 

 

XII. 

  

However else we might describe Baudrillard's thinking on the triumph of the machine, it's certainly pessimistic. 

 

Human beings, he concludes, may now be free to "operate within an integral individuality, free from all history and subjective constraints" [62], but it comes at a price: "it is clear that mankind exists only at the cost of its own death" [62]. 

 

In other words, our immortality is achieved only via our own technological disappearance and our "inscription in the digital order (the mental diaspora of the networks)" [92]. 

 

Lawrence would agree: Heidegger would agree: Byung-Chul Han would agree: and I think, ultimately, I agree too (even though I like taking snaps on my i-Phone - many of which end up here on TTA).  

 

And who knows, perhaps if we push the process of digitalisation all the way to its outer limits something surprising will happen and all that has disappeared will reappear in brutal solidity once more (just as impressionism's escape into pure light and colour gave way to post-impressionism and the return of great lumpy bodies and landscapes that made one nostalgic for mud and substance [k]).    

 

Perhaps objects will rediscover their singularity and we'll rediscover our analogue duality on the other side of digital integrity; i.e., the most radical - most demonic - element of human being that is also the most necessary and from which we derive our antagonistic vitalism.  

 

For as Zarathustra said, "'man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him'" [l].  

 

  

Notes 

 

[g] Any Heideggerians reading this might be mumbling the word Unverborgenheit to themselves at this point and I suppose that Heidegger's concept might be borrowed (and adapted) in order to discuss the appearance (disclosure) and disappearance (concealment) of beings and worlds, although Baudrillard makes no such attempt to do so.

 

[h] Later in his text, Baudrillard will describe CGI as an ultimate form of violence committed against the image; one which "puts an end even to the imagining of the image" [45]. 

 

[i] For Baudrillard, the intelligence of evil is a dualistic principle of reversability which underlies the world operating outside of moral reason and challenges the integral reality (and hegemony) of the digital world. In other words, it's a force of instability and conflict that reveals the cracks and contradictions in a system which thinks itself whole and perfect. 

 

[j] Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles, Exiles from Dialogue (Polity Press, 2007), pp. 134-35.

      This line is quoted by François L'Yvonnet in his Foreword to Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? and he reminds readers that this is a reference to (and rejection of) Kant's idea that a bird would fly even faster and higher were it free of all resistance. For L'Yvonnet, nihilism isn't the affirmation of nothingness, but the forgetting (or negating) of nothingness in order to bring everything to full presence.  

 

[k] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 182-217. See pp. 197-199 in particular for Lawrence's analysis of impressionism and post-impressionism. 

 

[l] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Penguin Books, 1976), p. 330. The line comes from the section entitled 'The Convalescent', in Part 3 of Zarathustra.  

 

 

Reflections on Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II

Temitope Ajose and Leah Marojević performing Megan Rooney's  Spin Down Sky II  

on the opening night of her exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 

Photo: Camilla Greenwell (12 June 2025) 

 

 

I.

 

On Sunday, I went to see a performance of Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II (2025), created in close collaboration with Temitope Ajose [1], Leah Marojević [2], and Tyrone Isaac Stuart [3], which, as well as being an interesting work in itself, also served as the finissage to her solo exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) [4]. 

 

The piece is the latest chapter in Rooney's developing tale of the fatal love between a male moth and a female bolas spider. But, before discussing this, I'd like first to make a few remarks on the title and, in particular, the word spin ...

 

 

II. 

 

Spin - an Old English verb of Germanic origin meaning to draw out and twist fibres of material (including thin air) into thread. 

 

It is, I think, one of those words that Heidegger would think of as elemental, i.e., one of those etymologically complex terms that reveal something fundamental about human being and existence; words that speak us rather than simply communicate information and ideas. 

 

These days, the concept of spinning has entered into many areas of life and the word has taken on multiple meanings depending on context. But I like to think that when Rooney speaks of spinning down sky she refers us to the possibility of making artworks out of the blueness of the Greater Day, or perhaps stretching the very stuff of the heavens so as to send yellow stars spinning like Van Gogh.

 

Of course, if writers spin words into narratives and painters spin colours into artworks, then spiders do something equally amazing by spinning silk into webs. And, as mentioned, at the centre of Rooney's tale is an unusual member of the Araneidae family ...

 

 

III. 

 

For those readers lacking a background in arachnology, a female bolas spider [5] is an orb-weaver that, instead of spinning a typical orb web, hunts at night by using one or more capture blobs consisting of a mass of spun fibre embedded in a sticky liquid on the end of a silk line, known as a bolas.  

 

By swinging the bolas at passing male moths, she hopes to snag her prey rather like a fisherman snagging a fish on a hook (thus it is that they are sometimes also referred to as angling spiders). If, after half an hour, she has been unsuccessful, she will consume the bolas and start again. 

 

On a bad night, she may only catch one or two moths; on a good night, six or seven. The female bolas spider, however, doesn't just leave everything to chance; she lures her favoured prey closer via the production of a scent that mimics the sex pheremones emitted by the female moth, driving the males mad with desire.

 

Having given a little bit of natural history by way of background, I'd like now to say something of the actual performance ...

 

 

IV.   

Spin Down Sky II is a new dance piece developed especially for the exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac. It premiered last month on the opening night of Yellow Yellow Blue. [6] 

 

I was disappointed to have missed it then, but I'm very glad to have seen it now and to have been further ensnared into Rooney's imaginative world, which, it seems, is shaped as much by movement as colour; i.e., a combination of choreography and chromatic chaos (which is why it makes perfect sense to both open and close the exhibition of paintings with a contemporary dance performance).  

 

The sequence of movements and rhythmic articulations unfolding in a unique time and space, both natural and mythical, seemed to me to be cleverly thought out and excellently performed (with, I'm assuming, some degree of improvisation) by the dancers although, I have to confess, I wasn't quite sure who was the moth and who was the spider. 

 

Arguably, however, as their bodies became increasingly entangled in a strangely erotic danse macabre, perhaps that's no longer an issue and binary distinctions around species, sex, life and death begin to curdle. 

 

And speaking of blurred lines ... 

 

The clothing worn by the two dancers had been hand-painted by Rooney, thus inviting us to think about the relationship not only between prey and predator but fine art and fashion; interconnected disciplines which often come together despite the efforts of some who would preserve the purity and status of the former and view the latter as lacking in high aesthetic value and cultural significance [7]. 

 

And then there was the excellent (if slightly too jazzy for my tastes) soundtrack provided by Stuart, with live sax improvisations on the night, obliging us to also consider the three-way relationship between colour, movement, and music. 

 

 

V.

 

Ultimately, Spin Down Sky II matters because, even though a short piece, it allows us to "think through and move across established categories and levels of experience" [8], transporting us to a place where the most profound ideas and feelings live and rise up. 

 

Via creative storytelling - i.e., an act of fabulation - Rooney allows us to step outside the gate and to understand something of the complex and shifting world of relationships - not just between a flying insect and an eight-legged spider, but between us and the natural world, us and art, us and one another - that is central to reality as a web of being and becoming.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Temitope Ajose is a London-based dance-artist with an interest in myth, psychology and magic. Her creative process unfolds in the playful space that exists between the sacred and absurd. Whilst Rooney conceived and directed Spin Down Sky II, Ajose is credited as the choreographer.   

 

[2] Leah Marojević is a Serbian/Montenegrin/Italian/British queer female independent artist, based in Berlin, whose practice spans dramaturgy, choreography, performance, rehearsal directing, writing, teaching, curation and mentorship. 

 

[3] Tyrone Isaac Stuart is an interdisciplinary artist with over 12 years of professional experience in dance and music. He blends krump, contemporary dance, visual art, and jazz music in his work.

 

[4] Some readers may recall a couple of posts published last month inspired by this exhibition: click here and/or here. 

 

[5] Immature female spiders and (the much smaller-bodied) adult males hunt without a bolas; simply positioning themselves on leaves and grabbing whatever insects they can with their hairy front legs.

 

[6] The bolas spider and night butterfly characters were first explored over two performances of Spin Down Sky at Kettle's Yard (Cambridge), as part of Megan Rooney's first major solo exhibition Echoes and Hours (2024). To watch the full (20 minute) performance on 21 June, please click here. Or for a short (43 seconds) teaser, please click here. 

 

[7] Historically, fashion has been regarded as a craft or applied art, distinct from the more elevated practice of fine art. This perception is rooted in the belief that fashion is frivolous, commercial, and transient, while fine art is profound, timeless, and transcendent. 

      Thankfully, such idealistic stupidity is now no longer so widespread and many people acknowledge that fashion - particularly haute couture and avant-garde designs - can be a powerful form of artistic expression and that the very best runway shows are pure theatre; one thinks, for example, of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 1999 show and its finale featuring a model (Shalom Harlow) in a white dress, spinning round on a rotating platform, and being spray-painted by robots: click here to watch on YouTube.  

 

[8] Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects (Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 4. 

 

 

This post is for Tom Hunt, who kindly invited me to the performance of Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II (27 July 2025).

 

 

I Stood Watching the Shadowy Fish ... Notes on the First Line of D. H. Lawrence's 'The White Peacock'

  

I. 

 

The opening line from Lawrence's debut novel, The White Peacock (1911), reads: 

 

"I stood watching the shadowy fish slide through the gloom of the mill-pond." [1]  

 

It is spoken by Cyril Beardsall; a fairly obvious self-characterisation, even if Lawrence cannot be completely identified with the (artistically inclined but somewhat priggish) narrator of his novel. 

 

Cyril is as enchanted by the intense stillness of the water as he is by the grey-silvery fish and the manner in which the entire scene was "gathered in the musing of old age" [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, a Heideggerian critic might be tempted to suggest that Cyril knows what it is to not merely inhabit a space and reflect upon it like one of those moon-like philosophers whom Zarathustra condemns [3]. 

 

That he knows how to dwell in the world; i.e., to form a deep and meaningful relationship with all the various elements of his environment, in this case, fish, gloom, water, stillness, and temporality.     

 

For Heidegger, dwelling is a fundamental aspect of Dasein that allows men and women to exist as mortals beneath the sky, upon the earth, and in the presence of gods.  

 

But whilst it allows connection and interrelationship, dwelling is not a way for us to project ourselves into all things; i.e., it's not a form of existential narcissism and Cyril is not merely admiring his own reflection in the mill-pond and desiring to become one with it.   

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, it's interesting to compare the opening of Lawrence's first novel with one of his early poems, 'The Wild Common', whose setting and situation are somewhat similar.

 

In this poem, the young male narrator observes his own reflection on the surface of a pond: "Naked on the steep, soft lip / Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro" [4]. 

 

It is only after he plunges naked into the water that he fully appreciates how the natural world has physical reality that is not dependent upon his perception and understanding of it: "Oh but the water loves me and folds me / Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me ..." [5] 

 

And that it is his self, in fact, which has no substantial reality apart from the world of flowers, sunlight, and pulsing waters.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche critiques the concept of immaculate perception (i.e., the mistaken idea that we are capable of pure knowledge and a detached, moon-like contemplation of the world free of all desire; emasculated leering, as he calls it). See the section entitled 'Of Immaculate Perception' in part two of Zarathustra.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common' - click here to read online. 

      Note that this is the original version of the verse, written c. 1905-06 and published in Amores (1916). Lawrence later revised it for his Collected Poems (1928), adding new material and finally saying what it was he had started to say (incoherently in his view) when he first wrote it as a young man. This final version can be found in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 5-6.

      For a critical reading of 'The Wild Common', see the first chapter of M. J. Lockwood's, A Study of the Poems of D. H. Lawrence: Thinking in Poetry, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987). 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common'. 

 

 

A Brief Note on the Material Basis of Identity by Jazz Griffin

Jazz Griffin: the Invisible Punk

 (SA/2025) [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

A recently published post on the way in which my memory of the past is inextricably interwoven with the suits I was wearing during the different stages of my life [2] has brought me (once more) to the conclusion that clothes do indeed maketh the man ... [3].  

 

I might not go so far as to say that if we went around naked we'd have no memories, no history, no culture, but, on the other hand, it's certainly the case that items of dress (and other personal objects) play a crucial role in anchoring the self and remembering the past. 

 

Having the memory of a goldfish and lacking a strong sense of self, I'm not at all certain I'd recall the people I've met, the places I've been, or the things I've done, were it not for the fact that I still have (some of) the jackets, trousers, shirts, ties, and shoes stuffed in the back of my wardrobe (although diaries, notebooks, and photo albums obviously act as vital aides-mémoire too).

 

Indeed, I'm pretty sure that had you unstrapped the straps, unzipped the zips, and stripped me of the tartan bondage suit I was wearing (aged 21) in the above photo, I'd have vanished before your very eyes, like Jack Griffin as he slowly unwound his bandages [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

We might conclude, therefore, that just as it's language that speaks us (and not vice versa) [5], so too do our clothes wear us (so to speak) and not the other way round; something which the most philosophical of fashion historians, designers, and researchers interested in enclothed cognition [6] have long appreciated.

 

In other words, our lives are literally fabricated; cut out and stitched together from a pattern like a well-tailored suit and finished with individual details.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on a photo from 1984 in which the model is wearing a tartan bondage suit, seditionaries-style boots, and a McLarenettes Punk It Up T-shirt 

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Suits You, Sir!' (5 July 2025): click here.

 

[3] The idea that clothing plays a crucial role in not only how men and women present themselves to the world and are perceived by others, but in actually constructing identity is, of course, as old as the hills and variations of the phrase clothes maketh the man can be traced back, like most things, to the Ancient Greeks. For those who spoke Latin, like Erasmus, author of a famous collection of proverbs and adages at the beginning of the 16th century, the phrase read: vestis virum facit. 

      Those moralists who think the opposite - i.e., that clothes don't make the man - and who drone on about inner qualities and a person's true character or substance being more important than appearance are, in my view, philosophically naive.

      Readers who are interested in this can click here for a post published on 31 May 2023 that touches on the topic with reference to the coronation of King Charles III. And for a post on how clothes maketh the woman - with reference to the queer case of Nellie March in D. H. Lawence's novella The Fox (1922) - click here.          

 

[4] Jack Griffin is the name of the chemist played by Claude Rains in the 1933 film The Invisible Man, directed by James Whale, and loosely based on the novel of that title by H. G. Wells (1897). Click here for the big reveal scene on YouTube. 

 

[5] This idea of language speaking man is usually attributed to Heidegger. It challenges the traditional view of language as a tool humans use to express themselves by suggesting that the internal logic, structure, and history of language actively shapes our thinking and understanding of the world. See, for example, what he writes in his essay 'Language', in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Harper Perennial, 1975), pp. 189-210. 

 

[6] Enclothed cognition refers to the influence that clothing has on the wearer's thoughts, feelings, actions, and behaviours. The term was coined by Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky who have been experimenting in this area since 2012. See their study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Volume 48, Issue 4, (July 2012), pp. 918-925. The abstract and excerpts from the report can be read here.  

 

 

Finally, readers who want to know more might like to read Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities, ed. Alison Slater, Susan Atkin, and Elizabeth Kealy-Morris (Bloomsbury, 2023). Do note, however,  that I've not yet read this collection of essays, so can't says whether it's worth the RRP of £85 for the hardback edition (or even the RRP of £28.99 for the paperback). 

 

 

Heaven and How to Get There

Revival Movement Association

revivalmovement.org 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ironic consequences of mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa is that there are suddenly lots of evangelical Christians on the street corners, preaching the gospel and reaching out as missionaries. 

 

In other words, having been colonised and converted by bible-bashing Europeans in the nineteenth-century, they are now attempting to undo secular modernity and effectively plunge us back into a world of religious mania.   

 

Thus it was I was given a little leaflet this morning, encouraging me to turn away from sin and put my faith and trust in Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour, as well as promising to reveal not only what Heaven is like, but, more importantly, how to get there.  

 

 

II. 

 

According to the leaflet, Heaven is a wonderful place whose beauty is incomparable:

 

The God of the Bible is a God of beauty, and this is why Heaven will be perfectly beautiful. It will be so beautiful that it cannot be compared to anywhere here on earth.   

 

Note how Heaven is capitalised, but earth is not: Nietzsche would argue that this provides a crucial insight into the Christian mindset; to the fact that Christianity prioritises that which comes after life whilst, at the same time, devaluing material (mortal) existence and is therefore profoundly nihilistic [1]. 

 

But let's leave aside the anti-Christian case against Heaven until later and continue with our reading of the leaflet ... 

 

Interestingly, no sooner are we told about the beauty of Heaven than we are informed that this is its least important aspect. What matters far more is the fact that Heaven is the place where all the purest, humblest, most unselfish people the world has ever known finally come together as one flock. 

 

And, to top it off, Jesus Christ Himself is there - as well as God in all His glory! Thus, in Heaven, we will finally have the opportunity to see God with our own eyes! 

 

I find the emphasis on this selling point a little perplexing; I'm no bible scholar, but didn't Jesus say somewhere or other that blessed are those who who have not looked upon the face of God and yet still believe in his majesty? Are we not encouraged to doubt our own eyes on the grounds that the senses can deceive us? [2]  

 

 

III. 

Moving on ... The little leaflet also tells us that Heaven is a place of happy reunions - i.e., a place where the dead and the living can catch up and renew relations, reminisce about old times, etc. 

 

There's no consideration of the fact that not everyone wants to meet with their former friends, partners, and family members - and certainly not if we are then never more to part. For as Larry David (mistakenly) reveals to his wife Cheryl in an episode of Curb, the great attraction of an afterlife is the thought of being free and single once more and able to make a fresh start: click here [3].  

 

 

IV. 

    

Clearly, as much as those who long for Heaven hate earthly life, the thing that really motivates their faith is fear of death, as this (inadvertently hilarious) passage makes abundantly clear:

 

Another great truth about Heaven is that there will be no death there. We will never have to endure the heartbreak of watching a loved one passing away. We will never again have to watch the undertaker as he screws down the coffin lid on the one we loved, there will be no black ties, no funerals passing through the streets, no standing by an open grave and watching a coffin lowered into it, no listening to the clods of earth as they fall remorselessly on the box that contains the remains of the one we love so much and whose death has left us so sad and broken. Thank God there is no death in Heaven!

 

Now, experiencing Angst - as Heidegger was at pains to explain - is a fundamental aspect of being human. Angst isn't merely a form of anxiety born of thanatophobia; rather, it is how Dasein grasps the idea of finitude and confronts the void at the core of existence [4].

 

In other words, angst allows us to understand that being-in-the-world rests upon non-being. An unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately a liberating one that dares us to live and become who we are (or find authenticity and accept responsibility for our own choices, as Heidegger would say).    

 

And those who would deny us this - and who would, in effect, rob us even of our own deaths - deserve our contempt.  

 

V. 

 

Finally, as to how to get to Heaven ... 

 

There is, apparently, only ONE way: and that is by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour:  

 

Jesus is the only way, and no man can come to the Father except through HIM. If you reject Him you shut the door to heaven on yourself. 

 

Well, that's unfortunate, perhaps, because I do reject Jesus - and I don't even think, like Lawrence, that there are many saviours and that man can secure himself a spot in paradise via a number of paths leading to God [5]. 

 

And - just to be clear - I wouldn't want to go to a Heaven in which the purest, humblest, most unselfish people are all gathered; because these people are very often nothing of the kind and they seem to spend a good deal of their time revelling in the misfortune and torment of those burning in that other place, which, let us remind ourselves, has a sign above its gates declaring: Built in the name of eternal Love [6].  

 

Ultimately, I stand with the naked and damned and not the smug and saved in their new white garments; and I choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" [7].   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche speaks of afterworldsmen who create a vision of paradise born of suffering, impotence, and an impoversished form of weariness: "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven [...] They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them." See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 60. 

 

[2] See John 20:29. The KJV reads: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

 

[3] Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 9: 'The Survivor' (2004), dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, starring Larry David and Cheryl Hines.    

 

[4] See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division I, Chapter 6, where Heidegger not only discusses Angst as a fundamental mood, but relates it to his important notion of Sorge (usually translated into English as care and which provides the basis for Heideggerian ethics).   

 

[5] See the fragment of text written by Lawrence given the title 'There is no real battle ...' in Appendix I of Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 385. 

      In this piece, Lawrence argues that "the great Church of the future will know other saviours" and that the reason he hates Christianity is because it declares there is only one way to God: "'I am the way' - Not even Jesus can declare this to all men. To very many men, Jesus is no longer the way. He is no longer the way for me." 

 

[6] This idea of the sign is found in Dante's Inferno Canto III. Lines 5 and 6 of which read: Fecemi la divina podestate / somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore (My maker was divine authority / the highest wisdom and the primal love). But note that Nietzsche says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet and that if there is a sign it is placed rather above the entrance to Heaven, with an inscription reading: Built in the name of everlasting Hate. See my post - 'A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell' (18 October 2014): click here. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.   

 

More Yellow, More Blue: Further Thoughts on an Exhibition by Megan Rooney

Emily LaBarge and Megan Rooney

against Rooney's Yellow Yellow Blue (2025)

Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas 

(200 x 152 cm / 78.5 x 60 in)   

 

 

I. 

 

Having visited an exhibition by an artist I was shamefully unaware of until very recently [1] - and having come away greatly impressed by the paintings and a little in love with the painter - I simply had to attend an event hosted by the gallery in which said artist, Megan Rooney, was to be joined in conversation by her friend and interlocutor, the Canadian writer Emily LaBarge [2]. 

 

And so, on a sunny Saturday morning, it's back into Town and back to the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (located in one of Mayfair's finest eighteenth-century mansion houses: Ely House) ... 

 

 

II.        

 

As I said in the original post written on Rooney's exhibition, it was the title of the show - Yellow Yellow Blue - that first caught my interest: I like yellow and I like blue, although maybe not with the same obsessive intensity as Megan; she really loves these colours and the chromatic territory that lies between them. 

 

But whilst yellow makes her want to tap her foot and dance and be swallowed by the sun, and blue makes her want to contemplate the secret of a colour that comes in many different shades and varies dramatically in intensity and brightness, I'm still not sure she offers us a new concept of these colours. 

 

But then, to be fair - even if abstract art is an attempt at some level to dissolve the distinction between art and philosophy - Rooney is an image-maker first and foremost and doesn't claim to be a philosopher. For whilst the latter are concerned with metaphysical constructions that define and enable a style of thinking, artists, as a rule, are more interested in novel combinations of sensation and feeling. 

 

In other words, art is a game of percepts and affects, not concepts: just as important and as vital as philosophy, but a very different way of confronting chaos [3]. For whereas philosophy wishes to give to chaos a certain consistency (and moves from chaos to concept), art wants to create forms invested with a little wild and windy chaos, whilst steadily moving from chaos to composition [4]. 

 

In sum: what Deleuze and Guattari say of artists in general, I would say of Rooney in particular; she struggles with chaos "in order to bring forth a vision that illuminates it for an instant" [5]. 

 

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that she's struggling less against chaos and more against the thing that all artists dread: cliché. And the reason she inflicts such violence on her canvases is in order that she might erase any trace of the latter and not simply scrub away the colour. 

 

But that's not an easy task; for the cliché is pre-existent and even after one primes or treats a blank canvas, it's still there, hiding, and threatening to ensure artistic failure (even if one produces a conventionally successful picture that is praised by critics and public alike).      

 

 

III. 

 

Interestingly, Rooney talks about her works as excavations; as if she's searching for something. But what is she searching for ...?

 

We know that beneath the paving stones lies the beach, but what lies beneath the multiple layers of paint she adds, removes, and reapplies to a canvas? Towards the end of their conversation, LaBarge suggested that it might possibly be love, but Rooney (to her credit) seemed resistant to that suggestion. 

 

So let's propose rather that she's looking for something that we might call truth ... Only it's a truth born of chaos and isn't tied to goodness or even beauty (although there is certainly beauty in Rooney's work and perhaps even an ethic to do with innocence and becoming rather than moral conformity).     

Perhaps we might better name this truth with the Ancient Greek term ἀλήθεια (aletheia) ... An unorthodox concept of truth first given us by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides and famously developed by Heidegger, who translated aletheia into German as Unverborgenheit (disclosure or, more literally, unconcealment).

 

Like Heidegger, Rooney seems to be enchanted by the manner in which objects reveal their presence before then withdrawing back into the darkness, never quite allowing us to grasp their truth in full. LaBarge was spot on to write that as soon as we think we have identified something recognisable in Rooney's works - a flower, a sunrise, a chimney pot - it melts once more back into light and colour, or retreats into shadow and silence [5].   

 

And it's the concept of aletheia that explains this phenomenon ... 

 

For aletheia is a radically different notion of truth and a radically different ontological model of the world to the one in which things are fixed and can be made fully present to mind. If one subscribes to the concept of aletheia then you can forget about ever being able to accurately describe a state of affairs or have full knowledge of anything. All of a sudden, absence matters at least as much as presence and being rests upon non-being as a distinct aspect of reality. 

 

In his essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art', Heidegger says the true value of a work of art is that it opens a clearing for the appearance of things in the world; and this glimpse affords human beings the opportunity to formulate not only a degree of knowledge, but meaning [6].

  

Amusingly, as LaBarge also notes, when those things momentarily glimpsed in one of Rooney's abstract (but not resolutely abstract) canvases withdraws it takes your heart with it. And that's not only a rather lovely thought, but an accurate one hinting as it does at the seductive beauty of Rooney's work. 

 

Ultimately, her canvases are like an erotic game of hide and seek; they tease and excite, without ever quite satisfying and this tells us something crucial not only about pleasure and the magical allure of objects, but about the nature of existence.         

 

 

IV. 

   

When leaving the gallery, I overheard a woman say that Rooney's canvases are so completely full of colour that they leave the viewer unable to move or breathe. But, actually, that's profoundly false and if she genuinely feels stifled, then, well, maybe she should loosen her girdle. 

 

For Rooney always leaves (or creates) just enough space to allow us to both move and breathe by making a slit in the Great Umbrella: "And lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision" [7]; a window to the yellow of the sun and the brilliant blue of the Greater Day. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The artist in question is Megan Rooney and the exhibition is titled Yellow Yellow Blue, at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 12 June - 2 August 2025: click here for details and/or here for my original post on the exhibition (26 June 2025). 

 

[2] Emily LaBarge wrote the introductory text - 'Like the Flap of a Wave' - for the catalogue to accompany Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including the London Review of Books, and she is a regular contributor to The New York Times. For more information and to read her work, visit her website: click here. 

 

[3] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (Columbia University Press, 1994). 

      And see also D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Chaos in Poetry', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116; an essay that Deleuze and Guattari freely borrow from in their work.     

 

[4] This move from chaos to composition is crucial: for art is not chaos, "but a composition of chaos that yields the vision or sensation, so that it constitutes [...] a composed chaos - neither foreseen nor preconceived". See Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 204.   

 

[5] Emily LaBarge, 'Like the Flap of a Wave', introductory essay for the catalogue to accompany Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). 

 

[6] See Martin Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Rouledge, 1993), pp. 139-212. This essay as it appears here was first presented as a tripartite lecture entitled Der Urspung des Kunstwerkes, presented in Frankfurt in 1936.     

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Chaos in Poetry' ... op. cit., p. 109. 

 

 

This post is for Hemma Matuschka (née Khevenhüller-Metsch) Head of Events and Client Development at Thaddaeus Ropac London, in gratitude for all her hard work and attention to detail.   

  

 

Sein zum Tode: Notes on the Case of Ellen West and the Work of Ludwig Binswanger

Ellen West (1888-1921) [1]

 

'She looked in death as she had never looked in life; calm, happy, and peaceful.'

 

I. 

 

I've been interested in the tragic (but also seminal) case of Ellen West since the Thanatology series of papers at Treadwell's in 2006 and, to be honest, I'm very surprised to discover that - apparently - I haven't discussed it in a post published on Torpedo the Ark before now ... [2]

 

 

II.

 

Der Fall Ellen West - Eine anthropologisch-klinische Studie was published in 1944-45 by the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger [3].

 

It offers a fascinating account of a young woman's agonising struggle to die at the time and in the manner of her own choosing and is considered to be a crucial text within a discipline known as Daseinsanalysis (one that attempts to combine therapeutic practice with existental philosophy) [4].    

 

Ellen West already had a clinical history of depression and disordered eating by the time she came under the care of Binswanger at his Bellevue Sanatorium in the picturesque town of Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, in 1921. Her ten week stay here resulted in a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa and schizophrenia and, ultimately, the suicide that she had long desired.

III.

West was born to a Jewish family in the United States in 1888, who moved to Europe when she was ten years old. An intelligent and articulate child, who enjoyed reading and writing poetry, she was also said to be disobedient and prone to obsessive-compulsive behaviour. By the time she reached early adulthood, she already had an extreme fear of gaining weight and began taking an extraordinary amount of laxatives.

 

Aged 28, she married her cousin, Karl, and hoped for a child. But her eating disorder had left her in a frail and fragile condition and by 30 she was no longer menstruating and had fallen to a dangerously low weight below 100 lbs. (the average weight for a healthy woman of her age at that time was between 135-150 lbs).

 

If he hadn't noticed already, West's husband was forced to confront the truth of his wife's condition when she confided in him about her problematic relation with food, her addiction to laxatives, and her obesophobia, which, by this stage, was mutating into an altogether something different (and something philosophically more interesting).       

 

 

IV.

Towards the end of her life, death was West's great obsession; one is tempted to describe it more as her passion and paradoxical life goal (i.e., that which provided meaning and direction and which she didn't merely resign herself to, but actively strove to achieve).

 

She had arrived at the conclusion that being dead was better than being fat - and preferable to a life that felt empty and boring and required the constant consumption of food. And so, West chose to invite death into her life by indulging in dangerous activities, such as kissing children with scarlet fever, riding horses in a reckless manner, and standing naked in the cold after having a hot bath [5].    

None of these things did the trick, however, and West eventually died after leaving the Bellevue clinic with Binswanger's blessing [6] and swallowing a lethal dose of poison; something her husband consented to and witnessed, telling others that she had been in a strangely festive mood for several days prior. 

 

Herr Doktor Binswanger was also recorded as saying that Ellen looked 'as she had never looked in life - calm, happy, and peaceful', having taken full responsibility for her own existence and her own death. 

 

 

V.

 

So, what, in sum, do we learn from the case of Ellen West? 

We learn that for some people, sometimes, only voluntary death brings freedom and fulfilment. 

 

In other words, there are times when nothingness and non-being take on a desperately positive meaning and only in her decision for death did West, paradoxically, find her authentic self. As George Steiner writes, conveniently summarising Heidegger's thinking on the matter in Sein und Zeit (1927):

 

"Dasein can come to grasp its own wholeness and [...] meaningfulness [...] only when it faces its 'no-longer-being-there' (sein 'Nicht-mehr-dasein) [...] Dasein [...] has access to the meaning of being because, and only because, that being is finite. Authentic being is, therefore, a being-towards-death, a Sein-zum-Tode." [7] 

 

 

VI.

 

It's clear that Michel Foucault found the case of Ellen West particularly fascinating and he develops this thanatological line of thinking in his own work. She was, he said, a woman "'caught between the wish to fly, to float in ethereal jubilation, and the obsessive fear of being trapped [by] a muddy earth that oppressed and paralyzed her'" [8].

 

To embrace death was obviously to bring her life to an end, but suicide nevertheless enabled the brief experience of a "'totally free existence […] one that would no longer know the weight of living, but only the transparency where love is totalized in the eternity of an instant'" [9]. 

 

I'm not sure I know exactly what this means - but it sounds very beautiful and it's worth noting in closing how the case of Ellen West has inspired several writers and artists, including the acclaimed American poet Frank Bidart, whose long persona poem 'Ellen West' (1977) can be read by clicking here [10]. 

 

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: 

Kopf Dr. Ludwig Binswanger und kleine Mädchen (1917-18) 

 meisterdrucke.uk

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The real name of the young woman at the centre of this case remains unknown; Ellen West was a pseudonym invented by her doctor, Ludwig Binswanger, who is believed to have based it on the character Rebecca West, in Ibsen's play Rosmersholm (1868), a central theme of which is the idea of suicide as one way to find meaning and freedom in death.

 

[2] I say apparently because I'm half-convinced that such a post was published on TTA but has since been deleted by Blogger. 

      The Treadwell's paper to which I refer was entitled 'Suicide and the Practice of Joy before Death'. It can be found in volume two of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

[3] Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology or what he termed Daseinanalyse (see note 4 below). 

      In 1907, Binswanger received his medical degree from the University of Zurich and, as a young man, he worked and studied with some of the great shrinks of his era, including Freud, Jung, and Eugen Bleuler (who coined the terms schizophrenia and autism). He was, however, always a bit wary of psychoanalysis and arguably more influenced by the philosophical ideas of Husserl and Heidegger. Perhaps not surprisingly, Foucault was a fan of Binswanger's work, translating his 1930 essay Traum und Existenz from German into French in 1954 and providing a substantial introduction (the fact that Ludwig Binswanger's uncle, Otto Binswanger, had been one of Nietzsche's physicians during the philosopher's final years was doubtless something Foucault also found intriguing).

      An English translation of Binswanger's most famous case - that of Ellen West - by Werner M. Mendel and Joseph Lyons, can be found in Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, ed. by Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (Basic Books, 1958).  

 

[4] Daseinsanalysis was first developed by Binswanger in the 1920s under the name phenomenological anthropology. His thinking at this time was heavily influenced by Husserl on the one hand and Freud on the other. His key idea was that human existence (as a specific mode of being) is open to any and all experience and that die Lebenswelt significantly shapes an individual's self (thus, if you want to change the way someone thinks, you must first alter their lived experience of the world).

      Binswanger also believed that mental health issues - including schizophrenia, melancholy, and mania - often stemmed from the paradox of men and women living alongside others whilst ultimately remaining alone. As he developed his thinking and continued his research, Binswanger began to increasingly relate his analysis to the work of Martin Heidegger and following publication of his book Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins in 1942, he began using the term Daseinanalyse.

 

[5] Whether or not these activities constitute a practice of joy before death is something that you, dear reader, may decide upon. It might be noted that West also attempted to commit suicide on several occasions via more conventional methods; for example, she twice overdosed on pills, once threw herself in front of a car, and once attempted to jump from the window of her psychiatrist's office.

 

[6] As James Miller informs us, in her sessions with Binswanger Ellen West is "alert, amiable, and apparetly consumed by the desire to die". Thus, after consulting with two other psychiatrists - both of whom agree that her case is hopeless - Binswanger decides that she should be allowed home, even though he is aware that Ellen "will almost certainly kill herself".  

      See James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, (Flamingo, 1994), pp. 74-75.

 

[7] George Steiner, Heidegger (Fontana Press, 1989), p. 99.

 

[8] Foucault quoted by James Miller in The Passion of Michel Foucault ... p. 75.

[9] Ibid.  

      Although Foucault didn't successfully commit suicide, he made a number of attempts to do so - including one in which he slashed his chest open with a knife - and always dreamed "'of violent death, of savage death, of horrified death' […] a death in which in its most inauthentic form is but the bloody and brutal interruption of life, yet in its authentic form, is the fulfilment of [man's] very existence". 

      For Foucault, then, as for Ellen West, suicide is the final desire or ultimate mode of imagining. Far from being a negation of the world and the self, it is rather "'a way of rediscovering the original moment in which I make myself world'". 

      Again, see Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault ... pp. 78-79. 

 

[10] 'Ellen West', by Frank Bidart, was originally published in The Book of the Body (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977). It can also be found in Bidart's In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991). 

 

Reflections on the Exhibition Time to Fear Contemporary Art (17-21 March, 2025)

Time to Fear Contemporary Art  (17-21 March, 2025)

exhibition poster featuring a work by SJ Fuerst

galleryeight.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Although my own interest in art that 'preys on our fascination with fear and plunges contemporary painting into the exhilarating world of horror' [1] doesn't have the same obsessive character as that of my esteemed frenemy Síomón Solomon, I still felt compelled to visit the exhibition currently showing at Gallery 8 and featuring work by a handful of artists [2]. 

 

Whilst relatively modest in scale, the exhibition has the grand aim of countering the recent trend of making art accessible and less intimidating. Whether it achieves this is debatable, but the artists on show certainly did their best to immerse visitors into the dark world of the queer-gothic imagination, showing us how beauty doesn't always have to be tied to the good and the true.         

 

 

II. 

 

Primarily, the work I wished to see was a small oil on panel (40 x 25 cm) by Lizet Dingemans, a London-based artist originally from the Netherlands, entitled Pediophobia (i.e., an intense and irrational fear of dolls and not, as some might mistakenly think, a fear of children). 

 

Now, whilst I have several phobias and anxiety disorders, this, fortunately, isn't one of them; although, having said that, I can see that some dolls are extremely creepy and seem to have come straight from the Uncanny Valley. However, they don't scare me and I don't think they pose an actual threat - except Voodoo dolls, obviously, although that might be more related to my fear of pins and needles (belonephobia). 

 

In fact, regular readers of this blog will recall that, if anything, I have a positive fascination with dolls and other human-like figures. Indeed, some might term it a fetish, although it stops just short of my wanting to have sexual relations with a doll or fall in love with a statue à la Pygmalion [3].  

 

Anyway, returning to Dingeman's work ...  

 

Pediophobia is only one of a series of phobia paintings included in the exhibition; the others being Ailurophobia, Arachnophobia, Ornithophobia, Phasmophobia and, last but by no means least, Thanatophobia. 

 

Why anyone would be afraid of cats, spiders, or birds, is beyond me; ghosts (and other supernatural entities) I can understand - I can even, at a push, see why some people might fear death, although, as Heidegger pointed out, authentic being is a being-towards-death and Angst is a crucial aspect of this seeking for an ontological grasp of one's own mortality and the fact that being rests upon non-being. 

 

Those who would in some way deny us our experience of Angst lessen Dasein's experience of life. In a sense, fear is a fundamental source of freedom [4].

 

 

III.

 

Whilst I was interested in and impressed by Dingeman's work - as indeed I was by the work of all the artists exhibiting - for me, the star of the show (and curator) was SJ Fuerst, allowing the dark undercurrent of her more colourful works of pop surrealism to finally surface, whilst, at the same time retaining her playfulness and sense of humour. 

 

There were no inflatable animals or toy cars in this exhibition (as far as I remember) - and I suppose we might describe her new works as sugar-free - but, nevertheless, works such as Trixie in the Basement and Shattered Psyche made me smile; as did the very amusing and thought-provoking Objects in Mirror (see figure 1 below).  

 

Objects in Mirror was obviously going to seduce me: firstly, as an object-oriented philosopher; secondly, as someone fascinated by the idea of mirror life (or homochirality) [5]; and thirdly, as someone who believes that behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation, a defeated enemy lies concealed, just waiting to take their revenge [6]. 

 

As Katie B. Kohn says in her essay written for the exhibition, the figure in Fuerst's work seems to defy their own entrapment within the pictures as images. The fact that the female figure is painted (in oil) on a looking glass only enhances the effect and evokes "the spectral reflections of the Daguerrotype as well as the galvanic shocks of the phantasmagoria" [7].     

 

Ms Kohn is also spot on to say that to regard a portrait of oneself too closely (à la Dorian Gray) - or a reflection in a mirror - is to trouble subjectivity; "to find oneself ever so subtly at risk of being unravelled ..." [8] 

 

Nevertheless, that's precisely what I thought I'd experiment with when standing in front of Fuerst's Objects in a Mirror (see figure 2 below) - attempting to see if Bram Stoker was right to suggest that when we look into a mirror it is mistaken to think the figure we see is ourselves; "the glass is a window; on the other side lies a stranger" [9].   

Figure 1: SJ Fuerst: Objects in Mirror 

Oil paint on mirror over interactive video installation, 51 x 73 cm (framed size)

Figure 2: SJ Fuerst's 'Objects in Mirror' as viewed by S. A. Von Hell (2025)  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This from the Gallery 8 website: click here. 

 

[2] The five artists whose work is shown in the exhibition are Luca Indraccolo, Lydia Cecil, Lizet Dingemans, SJ Fuerst, and Svetlana Semenova. Here, for reasons of space, I shall only discuss the work of two of the above: Lizet Dingemans and SJ Fuerst.  

 

[3] For those who are interested in agalmatophilia, there are several posts on Torpedo the Ark which touch on the subject: click here. For posts which specifically refer to sex dolls, click here and here. Readers might also be interested in the following paper presented at Treadwell's in October 2012: The Pygmalion Syndrome: Sex-Dolls, Solipsism, and The Love of Statues - available on request.

 

[4] I'm guessing that SJ Fuerst understands this, which is why she included a picture in this exhibition entitled The Anxious Thinker (oil paint on mirror, 37.5 x 43 cm).

 

[5] For a post dated 21 December, 2024 on the idea of homochirality, click here. 

[6] For a post dated 22 December, 2024 on the revenge of the mirror people, click here.

 

[7] Katie B. Kohn, 'Exhibition Essay' - available to read in the exhibition catalogue: click here.  

 

[8] Ibid. 

[9] Bram Stoker, 'The Judges House' (1891), quoted by Katie B. Kohn in her 'Exhibition Essay', op. cit.