Dear Fellow Art and Technology Enthusiast,
The Association Eumeswil of Vancouver and Florence invites you to consider
joining our intimate weekly discussion group on technology, art and human
values. You have been invited because of your presumed interest in and/or
connection to these topics. If you are not interested in receiving further
updates merely forward us this message.
The Association Eumeswil was originally founded in Florence to study the works
of Ernst Jünger, Germany's most individualistic (and controversial) 20th
century author. He died on February 17, 1998 at the age of 103. We decided to
open a chapter in Vancouver partly because its natural splendor complements the
artistic loveliness of Florence and partly because Vancouver is in a most
rapidly technologically advancing part of the world, the Pacific North West.
Technology, our modern magic lantern with all its potential for titanic
creation and destruction, is a major theme in Jünger's visionary works.
The book we will be reading this year, The Glass Bees, is a classic of modern
utopian literature, comparable to anything Orwell or Huxley ever wrote. It
presents a thought provoking vision of the possibilities and effects of
technology. It cuts deeply and decisively into the moral and metaphysical
implications of our titanic new technical powers. Though written in 1950, it
speculates in particular on higher and lower roads for virtual reality in the
fields of cinema, high art, education, love and war. But above all, we have
chosen this book for its treatment of the question of human soul in an ever
colder, ever more mechanical world.
Here are a couple of appetizers from the Glass Bees.
" The idea of plays acted by automatons was, of course, an old story; such
plays had often been tried in the history of the cinema. But formerly there had
never been any doubt about the automaton-character of the figures, and for that
reason the experiments had been limited to the field of fairy tales and
grotesqueries - with the basic effects of a puppet show or the old magic
lantern. Zapparoni's ambition, however, was to re-create the automaton in the
old sense, the automaton of Albertus Magnus or of Regiomontanus; he wanted to
create artificial people, life-sized figures which looked exactly like human
beings. People had taken this idea as a joke, but some had been shocked,
declaring it to be in bad taste - the conceit of an immensely wealthy man.
But they had all been mistaken, since even the very first of these plays
had been an enormous success. It was a luxury puppet show without puppeteers
and wires; it was the first performance not only of a new play but of a new
genre. The figures, it is true, still differed slightly from the human actors
we are used to seeing, but they differed pleasantly: the eyes of a larger cut,
like precious stones, the movements slower, more elegant, and in moments of
excitement even more violent and sudden than anything in our experience. Even
the ugly and abnormal had been transposed into new, amusing, or frightening but
always fascinating domains....
Thus one might say that these figures did not simply imitate the human form
but carried it beyond its possibilities and dimensions. The voices reached a
pitch that put any nightingale to shame, and a depth that outrivaled any bass;
the movements and expressions indicated that nature had been studied and
surpassed. The public now admired what it had ridiculed only yesterday. I shall
not repeat the praise of enthusiastic critics who saw in this play, performed
by marionettes, a new art form presenting ideal types."
Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees, pp. 99-100.
"Only recently, I had admired Romeo and Juliet on the television screen,
and had occasion to see for myself that a new and more beautiful era in
dramatic art had started with Zapparoni's automatons. How tired one had become
of the heavily made-up actors who became more insignificant from decade to
decade, and how badly heroic action and classical prose, to say nothing of
verse, suited them! In the end, one would not have known what passion, what
singing really was, had not Africans been imported from the Congo. Zapparoni's
marionettes were of a quite different proficiency. They needed neither make-up
nor beauty contests where chests and hips are measured and compared - they were
made to order.
I am not, of course, going to proclaim that they excelled human beings -
that would be absurd after all I have said about horses and riders. On the
other hand, I think that they set man a new standard. Once upon a time statues
and paintings influenced not only fashion but Man. I am convinced that
Botticelli created a new race and that Greek tragedy enhanced the human body.
That Zapparoni attempted something similar with his automatons revealed that he
rose far above technique, using media as an artist to create true works of art."
Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees , p.137.
The meetings are open to all light-hearted, serious-minded people, whatever
their level of formal training - we believe that only through a mutual
confrontation of diverse opinions arising from a spectrum of educational and
experiential backgrounds can objective truth be approached. As an originally
Florentine initiative, it is only natural that Association Eumeswil takes such
a Renaissance approach to learning. If you are interested in joining one of our
evening discussions, they are, for the moment at least, free but it is required
that you reserve a place for yourself and any one joining you. Space is
intentionally limited. Please e-mail Thomas Friese at [email protected] or
call 732-4447.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Thomas Friese
Association Eumeswil Vancouver
