https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=oHh8EI-xnVw
Hi Jonathan, I hope this finds you well and I was wondering if you’d be able to comment on the significance of embodied aesthetic practice as they relate the margin and historical transition periods, thank you, in advance. Yes, I understand the question. I see it’s phrased a little weirdly maybe for people but I think I understand what you mean. What you mean is that there’s a manner in which as we move towards, as we are in transition periods, as we are kind of at the end of something, moving into the beginning of something, we can notice that even in the manner in which art is represented, whether it be for us now like movies and music, all this stuff, whether it be in the past, whether it be sculptures or whatever, that you will see a kind of aesthetic of the marginal, of the confused, of the you know, for example, at the end of the Roman Empire, there was this obsession with the hermaphroditic figure and so you would see quite a few representations of the hermaphrodite. And so you could say, well, same thing is happening now, it’s actually a sign of the end when you see the hermaphrodite, you know, manifested over and over, this confusion of identity just being, becoming popular. So I would say that the best way to understand it would be that we need to be able to have things in their proper place. So it’s not wrong to use ambiguous symbolism. Think about the way in which I’m using the icon of St. Christopher, for example. It’s okay to use ambiguous symbolism, but you have to understand where its place is and what its role is. So the difficulty that we have now is that people, let’s say, worship ambiguity. So people have taken something which is something like abominable and have put it into the altar, right? When the abomination is in the highest place, that’s when you know, like, the end is coming, right? That’s when you know when it’s the end, when people have taken the abomination and put it in the highest place. So gargoyles are fine in a church, but if you see, if you go into a church and there’s a gargoyle on the altar, right, you know that we’re in trouble, okay? And so that is the best way to understand it. So you have to be wise and you have to be able to see to what extent you’re acting in passion and in just in kind of dark curiosity or dark desires. But it is okay, not only okay, but I think it’s important for us to recapture ambiguous symbolism and let’s say the aesthetic symbolism of the margins. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. Well, I mean, you can see that too, just in pop culture in a movie like Shrek, where they occupy all these fairy tale forms. And he starts out, you know, with a he makes sense as an ogre, the way he’s behaving and whatnot. But then the whole point is the ogre becomes king, but the ogre stays an ogre. Right. And so you start to realize that they’re just picking up things from fairy tale world and using them like costumes on normal personality and people types instead of as more of a cosmic image to represent a pattern of civilization. Because if the ogre stays an ogre and remains king, well, that’s a, you know, you have the hermit in the center of the world. What like, how is he going to look out for the rest of the people? Yeah, it wouldn’t. It’s a bad story at that point. It loses its very good language. Shrek is an upside down story. On purpose. Of course. But it’s a bad time. I mean, it is. It is. It is definitely not only is it upside down story, but if you watch Shrek attentively right at the beginning, they tell you that this is going to be an upside down story. And that happens in the outhouse. Like, you know, right away, because when he goes to the outhouse to do his business, he takes a fairy tale book, beautiful fairy tale book with like beautiful images and he rips the pages out a page out and he uses it to wipe himself. That’s Shrek. Shrek, all Shrek is that image right there. And Smash Mouth. And Smash Mouth. Yeah. It’s just not a great combo. All right. Oh, because the song. I was like, what? Like the song body once more. More copyright infringement. Yes. I only got eight notes in, not even. All right. So we should be okay. And you didn’t do it so well this time. So I think you won’t catch it. Well, yeah, yeah. Not on purpose. I didn’t want to shatter your screen.