What piqued our interest, what did we like and what didn't last week?
The contributors to the magazine make their own account of current affairs and everyday life through the individual filter of each one.
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plus Maggie Nelson's new book "Study in Blue" translated by Krystallis Glyniadakis from Antipodes Publications (Oct. 2023). A book whose original title, “Bluets”, the author was inspired by her favorite painting of all time, the American expatriate in France abstract painter Joan Mitchell, “Les Bluets” of 1973.
Blue is not a color, it is a set of shades, objects, moods, references, memories, feelings. In love with blue, Maggie Nelson wanders through melancholy, loss and lust exploring the color's connection to body and spirit. In conversation with Goethe, Wittgenstein and Barth, he writes a lyrical essay on love that ends, on the suffering body and on beauty as a refuge in times of loneliness and sadness.
"And Cézanne had had enough of psychology. And so he turned to color. "By painting all these little blue and or brown strokes, I make him look the way he looks," he once said of the face of a man he was about to paint. This may just be the colorful restatement of Wittgenstein's observation that “when you don't try to say the unspeakable, then nothing is lost. But the unsaid is included - unsaid - in everything that has been said!". Maybe that's why I take Cézanne's blues so seriously."
minus The vandalism with hammers by Just Stop Oil activists of Diego Velázquez's 17th century 'Rokeby Venus' at the National Gallery in London. The two activists were arrested after breaking the glass protecting the painting with orange safety hammers. This particular painting is known to have been previously destroyed in an act of protest by Mary Raleigh Richardson in 1914. London's National Gallery announced that the painting had been removed from the exhibition to be examined by conservators.
Valentini Margaritopoulou
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plus 28 governments have signed a world-first agreement on artificial intelligence (AI) at a summit in the UK to combat the "catastrophic" risks the technology could present. The Bletchley Declaration on the Security of Artificial Intelligence is a statement signed by representatives and companies of 28 countries, including the US, China and the EU. It aims to address the risks of so-called frontier AI models – the large language models developed by companies like OpenAI.
Rallying large forces to support moral principles can be considered a success, but a commitment to produce concrete policies and accountability mechanisms must follow, and quickly.
minus Last Monday, two activists from Britain's Just Stop Oil, a British group that wants to prevent the granting of new oil and gas exploration and extraction permits, knocked on the protective glass of a painting by Velasquez, which is on display at the National Gallery in London. causing, according to a statement from a representative of the Gallery, minimal damage to the surface of the painting. Although usually, such vandalism is mainly done to attract public attention and interest to the cause the activists want to promote, rather than to damage the exhibits, I wonder how it is possible to hear the content of the message when the medium is that which attracts attention. And usually in a negative way, causing negative associations with the content of the message as well. After all, you have to convince me, not challenge me.
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Stelios Tsiftsis
plus THE film "Net", a 2016 South Korean independent drama film directed and written by Kim Ki-dok, which although I saw it three weeks ago on ertflix, is still playing in my head. Koreans make masterpieces that stand alongside the greatest of European culture
minus The monster apartment buildings that rise in the most unlikely places in the center of Larissa.
Spyros Cavallieratos
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plus "The opium of intellectuals" by Raymond Aron published in 1968 and recently released in Greek translation by Petros Martinides by the Athens Review of Books.
minus I came across a series of history books, forgotten in my library on a high shelf, read many years ago. I tried to re-read some of them for something I was looking for, it was impossible. A whole generation of historical Greeks - I will not mention names - very consciously did not make history but propaganda and ideology. Fortunately, the new generations of historians are more concerned with their science and less with their ideology.
Giannis Achyropoulos
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plus Voters in the Republican-controlled state of Ohio voted last Tuesday to revise the state constitution to enshrine the protection of the right to abortion. Many Democrats believe that access to abortion is the solution to their political problems. This week's election results – with Ohio guaranteeing access to abortion and Democrats winning in both Virginia and Kentucky – support that idea. Advocates are also particularly focused on potential ballot initiatives in Arizona, Nevada and Florida, as well as Republican-held Nebraska and South Dakota.
Let's see, because the news for Joe Biden couldn't be worse, as poll after poll shows him trailing Donald Trump in a presidential rematch. The war in Gaza has captivated younger voters drawn to his longstanding criticism of US "imperialist" foreign policy…
minus I feel that I have lost my freshness and humor... I must be suffering from collective depression too. More in today's editorial.
Evi Botsaropoulou
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minus The weather is wintry and it may be November but now the first cold weather is starting. Take off the winter coats, roll out the rugs and drink hot chocolate. It comes even closer to the fairytale setting of Christmas which is my favorite holiday.
plus Along with this wintry weather setting has started an epidemic of sick, with headache, runny nose, cough and pills being the only solace along with hot soups to get through this winter too
Fani Durdura
*Frontpage picture: pinterest
