Ulysses Jenkins’  “Sobriety” videotape 5.45′

to become “master of the world and of himself”

All the images are stills from video

THE WHOLE VIDEO IS PUBLISHED AT THE END OF THE TEXT WITH PERMISSION OF THE MAKERS

by Rosanna Albertini

The griot* is back. And his stories take off from the planet of facts fused into news and sculpted by useless words chasing a truth which is refused —by those who first of all need to believe. The planet is sad, violent, run across by feral humans. The same as always, since the beginning of writing that created history. 

The planet is where the griot lives. As if he were blind, the griot becomes a living echo. Bumping into the walls of the public insanity and returning to his body through waves of clarity and sobriety. Waiting for him are the phantoms of his mind: phantasmagorical images of water and air, desert and flowered land: the state of nature of his soul. 

Video images make his body an empty shell as if the griot in him had asked to turn into time, in the span of a dream. He can multiply because other smart humans have created special effects, and walk under water — a small person among enormous fish. Or, he can simply enjoy daily routines: that’s life! 

 The 5.45 minutes of Sobriety are not a parable. The artist escapes from daily brutality and stupidity. A morality final would stigmatize this piece as utilitarian, once more something to be used… enough. We have a piece of art.

The story brings the griot back to himself, identity isn’t “an inoffensive relationship to himself.”

It is it is and always was “to be chained to himself, and taking care of himself is a necessity.” (Emmanuel Levinas)

There is no infinity nor history that counts. Ulysses is present now, for real, that is not a dream.  But wearing the griot’s costume he can spread an impersonal speech and make it universal: don’t give up feeling.

Today Nobody dares to scream in the wind, “Your Intelligence will kill you,” like artist Jochen Gerz did more or less fifty years ago. 

Now Ulysses sings, and does it softly, whispering to our eyes keep being wide open, human among humans, what’s a joint compared to a rocket?  Worth laugh quietly, giving a chuckle. 

SOLITAIRE UNDER THE OAKS   

    by Wallace Stevens

In the oblivion of cards

One exists among pure principles.

Neither the cards nor the trees nor the air

Persist as facts. This is an escape

To principium, to meditation.

One knows at last what to think about.

And thinks about it without consciousness,

Under the oak tree, completely released.

Bibliography and Notes

Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, New York, Vintage Books 1990

Emmanuel Levinas, Le temps et l’autre, Fata Morgana, 1979, Quadrige/Puf 1983

Note by RA These two books never go away from my desk. Poetry and philosophy holding hands. They are my friends as I write, helping to keep my mind clear about human existence and experience. Levinas’ book was conceived in a German camp and written after his liberation. He thought me nuances and defaults of our understanding, and the lack of reality of idealistic abstractions. Time, being, existence merge into the fullness of life, and only the face to face with other humans allows us to exist. Wallace Stevens, on the other side of the ocean, dressed with poetic bodies very similar ideas. “A poem is a natural object,” “Poetry is great only as it exploit great ideas or what is often the same thing great feelings.” As I write about art and artists, I never feel alone.

*GRIOT from French, earlier guiriot, perhaps from Portuguese creado. Sometimes called ‘a bard.’ A member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa. (On line Dictionary)