Our dreams prove that to imagine – to dream about things that have not happened – is among mankind’s deepest needs.
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Dreamer in Prague
iPhone Photography: Lucky Shot
I got this shot while preparing to photograph David Cerny’s Man Hanging Out in the Stare Mesto area of Prague with my iPhone. As I was composting the shot, the nun suddenly appeared in the frame. Thank goodness I had my wits about me and somehow knew to press the button at that moment. What a lucky shot. Then again, as the saying goes…
“I’m a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have.”
– A quote attributed to many, including Thomas Jefferson
Man Hanging Out is in the ‘Stare Mesto’, or Old Town, section of Prague and is surrounded by richly detailed buildings, narrow streets, and cobbled plazas. The sculpture is close to Old Town Square and other popular areas in Old Town.
Readings from the North Sea
I had the wonderful opportunity to contribute to this amazing project by Allen Shelton and Nathan M. Peracciny. It’s a book trailer for Allen’s book, Where the North Sea Touches Alabama. I also manage the blog, Soft Arcades which showcases the work of Allen Shelton. Check it out.
Allen Shelton’s “Where the North Sea Touches Alabama” (On sale by University of Chicago Press: press.uchicago.edu) is a work of sociological fictocriticism that explores not only the author’s relationship to the artist but his physical, historical, and social relationship to northeastern Alabama, in rare style.
“In Christ there is no East or West, North or South, and the North Sea touches Alabama.” Part of the sermon by a Sand Mountain preacher, 1979.
This utterance by a preacher inexplicably came true when the dead artist Patrik Keim’s coffin may have been uncovered two hundred miles from where it was interned in an ancient beaver swamp in Alabama by dozer operator who quickly reburied the miraculous coffin. The artist Keim was obsessed by the North Sea.
The report of the investigation into the event is titled Where the North Sea Touches Alabama by Allen Shelton, University of Chicago Press, 2013. The fictocritical account is part memoir, part steam-punk theory, and a hard edged psychic materialist analysis of the possible return.
Book Trailer credits
Directed & Edited by Nathan Peracciny
Readings by:
Lesley Stern, author of The Smoking Book.
Michael Joyce, author of Foucault, in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden.
Donna Haraway, author of A Cyborg Manifesto.
Kathleen Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects.
Special thanks to:
Anne Costello, Molly Jarboe, Lesley Stern, Michael Joyce, Donna Haraway, Kathleen Stewart, Ruah, Nadja, and Tyree Shelton.
Artistic contributions by:
Julian Montague, Molly Jarboe, and Patrik Keim’s archives.
Whichever Way You Go
A splash of color for the day courtesy of the iPhone.
