Fleurs du Mal Magazine
The Rights of Women
Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;
O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,
Resume thy native empire o’er the breast!
Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;
That angel pureness which admits no stain;
Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,
And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.
Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store
Of bright artillery glancing from afar;
Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon’s roar,
Blushes and fears thy magazine of war.
Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim,—
Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost;
Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame,
Shunning discussion, are revered the most.
Try all that wit and art suggest to bend
Of thy imperial foe the stubborn knee;
Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend;
Thou mayst command, but never canst be free.
Awe the licentious, and restrain the rude;
Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow:
Be, more than princes’ gifts, thy favours sued;—
She hazards all, who will the least allow.
But hope not, courted idol of mankind,
On this proud eminence secure to stay;
Subduing and subdued, thou soon shalt find
Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way.
Then, then, abandon each ambitious thought,
Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move,
In Nature’s school, by her soft maxims taught,
That separate rights are lost in mutual love.
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
(1743 – 1825)
The Rights of Women
Anna Laetitia Barbauld wrote this poem in 1793,
in response to Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman´.
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More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Feminism, The Ideal Woman
In O, artist and writer Tammy Nguyen returns to Vietnam to visit the caves of the Phong Nha Karst.
This journey into the Karst’s “wind-carved teeth” resounds with the traditional songs of Nguyen’s guides, whose melodies produce the O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O that echoes through narratives woven together around it as a visual and sonic spine: the story of Nguyen’s Uncle Van, an opportunistic businessman who traded in Vietnamese porcelain vessels; her coming-of-age as a child with missing teeth, and the material and mineral histories of the veneers that eventually completed her “American Smile”; the plastic paradise of the man-made island of Forest City, a simulacrum of natural beauty kept uncannily bright and lush by the flow of global investment capital; and, behind it all, a retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that supplies what the original parable lacked: an understanding of fantasy’s role in the construction of a sublime.
In O’s anti-allegory, the personal and geopolitical sit uncomfortably alongside one another. The shape of a bowl becomes the mouth of a cave. The uncanny naturalism of Nguyen’s zirconium veneers reflect Forest City’s manicured paradise.
What emerges is a kaleidoscopic meditation on the play of language across scales: how it rebounds between our stories of self and the semantic regimes of global capital alike.
Tammy Nguyen is a multimedia artist and writer whose work spans painting, drawing, printmaking, and publishing. Intersecting geopolitical realities with fiction, her practice addresses lesser-known histories through a blend of myth and visual narrative. She is the founder of Passenger Pigeon Press, an independent press that joins the work of scientists, journalists, creative writers, and artists to create politically nuanced and cross-disciplinary projects. In 2008, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study lacquer painting in Vietnam, where she remained and worked with a ceramics company for three years thereafter. Nguyen received an MFA from Yale in 2013 and was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill in 2014 and a NYFA Fellowship in painting in 2021. She was included in Greater New York 2021 at MOMA PS1 and has also exhibited at Nichido Contemporary Art in Japan, Smack Mellon, Rubin Museum, The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre in Vietnam, and the Bronx Museum, among others. Her work is included in the collections of Yale University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MIT Library, the Seattle Art Museum, the Walker Art Center Library, and the Museum of Modern Art Library. She is Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University.
O
by Tammy Nguyen
Binding:Paperback
Pages:144
Publ.date:9/1/2022
Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse
Product Number:9781946433916
ISBN: 978-1-946433-91-6
Price: $ 30.00
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More in: - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive M-N, Archive M-N
Poems
No Muse will I invoke; for she is fled!
Lo! where she sits, breathing, yet all but dead.
She loved the heavens of old, she thought them fair;
And dream’d of Gods in Tempe’s golden air.
For her the wind had voice, the sea its cry;
She deem’d heroic Greece could never die.
Breathless was she, to think what nymphs might play
In clear green depths, deep-shaded from the day;
She thought the dim and inarticulate god
Was beautiful, nor knew she man a sod;
But hoped what seem’d might not be all untrue,
And feared to look beyond the eternal blue.
But now the heavens are bared of dreams divine.
Still murmurs she, like Autumn, ´This was mine!’
How should she face the ghastly, jarring Truth,
That questions all, and tramples without ruth?
And still she clings to Ida of her dreams,
And sobs, ´Ah! let the world be what it seems!’
Then the shy nymph shall softly come again;
The world, once more, make music for her pain.
For, sitting in the dim and ghostly night,
She fain would stay the strong approach of light;
While later bards cleave to her, and believe
That in her sorrow she can still conceive!
Oh, let her dream; still lovely is her sigh;
Oh, rouse her not, or she shall surely die.
Stephen Phillips
(1864 – 1915)
Poems
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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, Archive O-P, Archive O-P
A WHEEL A STONE A ROPE A WING
exhibition
04.03 – 08.04 2023
Matea Bakula (BA/NL)
Ruta Butkute (LT/NL)
How do you show movement in a static object? And how would you place this object in alarge exhibition space? How would you want the audience to perceive this, and how do you combine all of this into a playing field for a professional dancer?
These are the questions Matea Bakula (1990) and Ruta Butkute (1984) have been working on recently at PARK. The answers to these questions were the inspiration of this exhibition focusing on movement, dynamics and interaction between people, objects and space.
The visitor is invited to experience rather than view this presentation. Realize that the works are made in dialogue with the space in which they are presented and explore your own role as spectator within this interplay.
The exhibition can be visited during normal opening hours. These are additional activities with the artists:
Saturday 4 March 16:00 | Opening
With the performance Collide, a choreography by Ruta Butkute and performed by Yurie Umamoto
Saturday 11 March 16.00 | Guided tour
Experience the exhibition together with the artists, Matea Bakula and Ruta Butkute
Saturday 8 April 16.00 | Finnisage
With the performance Collide, a choreography by Ruta Butkute and performed by Yurie Umamoto
A WHEEL A STONE A ROPE A WING
PARK is an art initiative founded by Rob Moonen in cooperation with six other artists living in Tilburg. At this moment the PARK staff consists of Linda Arts, René Korten, Rob Moonen and Lieve van den Bijgaart.
PARK is a platform for contemporary visual arts positioning itself between Kunstpodium T and Museum De Pont. PARK organizes an exhibition program in the former Goretti Chapel at the Wilhelminapark in Tilburg.
PARK
Wilhelminapark 53, NL-5041 ED Tilburg
park(at)park013.nl
Twitter.com/ParkTilburg
Facebook.com/Park013
Instagram.com/platform_for_visual_arts
Opening hours during exhibitions:
Friday 1-5 pm
Saturday 1-5 pm
Sunday 1-5 pm
Free admission
PARK is on 10 minutes walking distance from Tilburg-Central-Station in the direct neighborhood of Museum De Pont. There is limited parking space in front of the building.
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More in: Art & Literature News, DANCE & PERFORMANCE, Exhibition Archive, FDM Art Gallery, Linda Arts, Park, Sculpture
Travel
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing,
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892 – 1950)
Travel
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Millay, Edna St. Vincent
The Italian Soldier
Shook My Hand
The Italian soldier shook my hand
Beside the guard-room table;
The strong hand and the subtle hand
Whose palms are only able
To meet within the sounds of guns,
But oh! what peace I knew then
In gazing on his battered face
Purer than any woman’s!
For the flyblown words that make me spew
Still in his ears were holy,
And he was born knowing that I had learned
Out of books and slowly.
The treacherous guns had told their tale
And we both had bought it,
But my gold brick was made of gold –
Oh! who ever would have thought it?
Good luck go with you, Italian soldier!
But luck is not for the brave;
What would the world give back to you?
Always less than you gave.
Between the shadow and the ghost,
Between the white and the red,
Between the bullet and the lie,
Where would hide your head?
For where is Manuel Gonzalez,
And where is Pedro Aguilar,
And where is Ramon Fenellosa?
The earthworms know where they are.
Your name and your deeds were forgotten
Before your bones were dry,
And the lie that slew you is buried
Under a deeper lie;
But the thing that I saw in your face
No power can disinherit:
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit.
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
The Italian Soldier Shook My Hand
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Taken from ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’, published by New Road, 1943. Poem written 1939
More in: Archive O-P, Archive O-P, George Orwell, Orwell, George
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