Atlas of Remote Islands

I’m one of those people who tend to believe that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Chronically restless, I frequently book flights, plan short trips and read travel magazines – but more often I just daydream of road trips, wildlife, and having adventures.

Judith Schalansky’s Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln: 50 Inseln, auf denen ich nie war und niemals sein werde (mare, 2009) is an effective remedy for any travel bug and the perfect book for the dreary post-Christmas bleakness that is the month of January.

After choosing 50 remote islands and researching their history and geography (but without visiting them in person – the central premise of the book), Schalansky wrote a one-page historical vignette and designed a true-to-scale map for each one of them (she is both a writer and a trained graphic designer).

This beautiful and intelligent book makes a strong case for armchair travelling, for what the stories strongly convey is that islands are not only receptacles for dreams and utopia, or testing ground for explorers, scientists and missionaries, but also, and fundamentally, sites of cruelty and violence.

Judith Schalansky's 50 islands.

The atlas abounds with tales of incest and rape; of  deprivation and isolation; of disease and invasive species; of bleak, barren and infertile landscapes; of shipwreck and mutiny; of disappointment and deception. These characteristics are reflected in the names of some of the islands: Deception Island in the Southern Ocean; Danger Islands in the Pacific Ocean; or Seclusion Island in the Arctic Ocean. Robinsonades aren’t exactly romantic, it turns out.

So set out on an imaginary journey with the Atlas of Remote Islands in hand and the classic of armchair travelling, Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794) in mind, and climb Mischief Mountain, before refreshing yourself in the Lost Lake and following the river Styx to the Fortune Rocks – leaving behind Afterworld Ridge, Storm-Petrel Plateau and the Basin of the Thousand Colours (all on Possession Island in the Indian Ocean).

Living Jewels (II)

Jewel-incrusted live beetle worn as a brooch by a Mexican woman crossing the border in Texas.

The Guardian World News this weekend:

“Pest control measures meant officers promptly confiscated the item worn as a brooch on the traveller’s sweater and sent it for further inspection. The beetle was attached to the woman’s clothing by a gold chain and safety pin.

“CBP officers seized the decorative clothing accessory and sent the live beetle to the Plant Inspection Station at Los Indios International Bridge for further identification. Because the traveller declared the insect no monetary civil penalty was issued,” the official account declared.

Animal rights campaigners were less forgiving, reported the south Texan newspaper The Monitor. Jaime Zalac, for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said: “Beetles may not be as cute and cuddly as puppies and kittens, but they have the same capacity to feel pain and suffer. It’s ironic. We spend hours each week helping kind people find humane ways to relocate lost insects such as ants, bees and roaches that wander into their homes. People feel so good about not hurting them, while this woman paid someone to mutilate them.”

Beetle species have proved popular subjects for jewellery for centuries and attaching it to live beetles is apparently not uncommon in Mexico. Jackie Kennedy is said to have been given one with emeralds.”

Read the whole article here.

German Soundscape

According to Baroque poet Georg Philipp Harsdörfer (Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele, 1641), the German language

…thunders with the heavens, flashes with the swift clouds, glitters like hail, whistles with the wind, foams with the waves, clatters like locks, resounds with the air, detonates with cannons, roars like the lion, lows like the ox, snarls like the bear, bells like the deer, bleats like the sheep, grunts like the pig, barks like the dog, neighs like the horse, hisses like the serpent, meows like the cat, honks like the goose, croaks like the frog, buzzes like the hornet, squawks like the chicken, clacks its beak like the stork, caws like the crow, twitters like the swallow, and chirps like the sparrow…

Quoted in Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists (2009)

Coral or cuttlebone, anyone?

Robinet Testard, image from Matthaeus Platearius’s The Book of Simple Medicine, Ms. Fr. VI n. 1, fol. 166v., c. 1470,
St. Petersburg, National Library.

Classifying the Animals

Mark Dion, Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy, 2005, Manchester Museum. Detail: Borges filing cabinet.

Classifying the Animals
(after some lines of Borges)

by Robert Gray

There are those that in the distance seem a swarm of gnats
those that with their barking try to rally us in a campaign against the stars
those that torment their prey
those that follow both sides of an argument
those that have broken a precious vase
those that can only be painted with a one-haired brush
those whose tongues light candles on the fingers of our hands
those that curl their tails
those that refute the Argument from Design, such as bedbugs and liver fluke
stupid ones who, lie still for a while and then run
those whose being is as clenched as a knot in a frozen rope
those that are bored
the good-natured beetles
those such as frogs and snails that are Enlightened beings
humans, born unable to stand
those that are fit to be emblazoned on a flag
mosquitoes
crocodiles
those that should exist – unicorns and mermaids
unacceptable ones, unless we can make a great rational effort
those that cause people to smile – ladybirds, etc.
those that stir in us an erotic feeling
those that are easily broken and yet their kind continues to exist
those that one would like to be – the centaur, the phoenix.

In PN Review 191, vol. 36, no. 3, January-February 2010, p. 37.

Play-fly-ness

Flies are notoriously short-lived. These dead specimens have been humorously reanimated with a few simple pencil strokes. Photographs by Magnus Muhr.

Pee

Horse

Run

Sun

Giant

Queue

Fun

The Pull of the Sea

I would like to spend one Saturday this year browsing a pile of old mare magazines – a German-language bimonthly devoted to the culture, science, geography, ecology, economy and politics of the sea. Does one automatically develop a fascination with all things water and underwater, I wonder, if one grows up near the mountains?

A Mouthful of Beetle

This cartoon of Charles Darwin riding a giant beetle was drawn by one of his friends and fellow beetle enthusiasts, Albert Way, in Cambridge in 1832.

While a student at Cambridge University, Darwin became a fanatical collector of beetles. In a letter to his friend Leonard Jenyns of 1846 he recalls the following episode:

I must tell you what happened to me on the banks of the Cam in my early entomological days; under a piece of bark I found two carabi (I forget which) & caught one in each hand, when lo & behold I saw a sacred Panagæus crux major; I could not bear to give up either of my Carabi, & to lose Panagæus was out of the question, so that in despair I gently seized one of the carabi between my teeth, when to my unspeakable disgust & pain the little inconsiderate beast squirted his acid down my throat & I lost both Carabi & Panagus!

See the Darwin Correspondence Project.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Christmas 1905

The charming illustration reproduced on this card was painted by William Balfour-Ker (1877-1918) and originally appeared as the cover of Life magazine on December 7, 1905. The twenty-one story Flatiron Building had been completed two years earlier, becoming for a time New York‘s tallest building. Balfour-Ker’s image reflects the ambivalence some people felt toward the early skyscrapers.

Card and text see here – card available to order from Archelaus Cards.

It’s nice when they’re soft.

In the last lecture before Christmas break, I asked my second-year students on the Afterlife of Objects: Collecting, Museums, Display course to come up with a short definition of ‘object’ – basically to summarise in one or two sentences what the course was all about. Here are some of the students’ answers:

An object’s materiality can withstand time, but its meaning can be infinitely diverse.

An object is anything which is contextualised by the fact that it has the focused attention of a viewer.

Something we can visualise and hold – evoking feelings, memories, aspirations. It’s nice when they’re soft.

The meaning of an object is affected by its relationship with people. In many cases it represents an extended part of a person such as their memory.

Joseph Beuys, Noiseless Blackboard Eraser, 1974. Felt, paper, ink.

Anything and everything.

A physical item that acquires meaning through labelling by human beings.

An object is something which has a biography – without it, it may not exist.

Simply something one can engage with.

A physical thing that belongs to someone or something, either part of a collection or existing on its own.

An object is an anchor for discourse and memory.

An object is a compound of physical matter meaningful to some, meaningless to others.

Something of personal value which can be defined by its context.

Jenny Christmann, 20 Woollen Books, 1977-78. Wool and acrylic.

An object is an inanimate thing within a specific context that undergoes change through historical documentation and shifts in place and time. Constantly redeveloping its relations with humanity.

An object is an item which has significance to a person/culture.

An object dies away, but its memory is eternal.

An existential dilemma.