Had the Spaniards not come

On the first Crocodile Day of the year of Quetzal, that is somewhere at the end of fifteen hundreds, Ptleoatlatl, the elusive God of Anonymity was chewing dreamingly a fresh batch of coca leaves brought from some place the other side of the Andes. The batch was not bad at all. Different. Special. It that made you feel more lightheaded than the regular stuff priests would leave for him on the altars.
He was sitting where he usually sat at this time of the day, by the Sea of the Carribes wandering if there was anything else beyond those crappy islands just beyond the horizon. Yeah, he was kind of a God but somehow he was condemned to a terrestrial existence like everybody else; or almost. The "almost" being that pesky bag of recycled feathers named Quetzalcoatl doing showy jumps from one tree to another, well yeah and sometimes kind of skipping a few of them. Anyway, it even wasn't really such a big deal 'cause the pompous pest could not keep it up for more than the distance between two low rank pyramids in Tenochtitlan. It was annoying that Huitzilopotchli always favored that good for nothing. All he did was just hang out with priests and rich merchants and break winds pretending they're transgressions between Earth and Sky. As for himself, what could he do - he was the God of Anonymity, The God of your every day regular Atl, the pyramid builder, gazillions of them and the damned fools didn't even know about his existence. And why should anyone do? Wasn't he the Bloody God of Anonymity?  Strike that - the bloody one was Huitzilopotchli! Ptleoatlatl himself was just sweaty. Yeah, just listen how that sounds - The Sweaty Almighty God of Anonymity! Hilarious! How the hell should anyone know about him. However, there was a trickle of mercy coming his way from the Great All Merciful Sun. A group of lower rank priests in desperate need of justifying their ceremonial scheduling built him some sort of makeshift altar where he would occasionally find some goodies. Of course it was mostly crap like stone-dry nuts, over-ripe fruit, the ubiquitous barbequed bat with nothing left on his bones but his pathetic shadow... Fortunately, sometimes a nice surprise awaited him, like the other day. That nice little a bag of tender coca leaves, picked at the peak of their season. Yeah, wouldn't it be great to have that every day! ...or at least once a week! ..or once a month, for heaven's sake....
As Ptleoatlatl was sitting, dreaming and chewing, maybe not necessarily in that order, a sudden burst of wind hit him in the face with something like a wave of sand. TEZCATLIPOCA!!! This was the first thing that came to his mind. The bloody trickster - this one bloody for sure! And as he was gasping for air with his mouth wide open he got another mouthful of both - some air and lots of sand. Under normal circumstances it shouldn't have been a problem. Just spit and rinse a few times and maybe keep a handful of ptlotyetl sand-eating worms in the mouth during the siesta. Unfortunately this time he had that exquisite batch of coca leaves all moistened and softened that now turned into a disgusting crunchy paste grinding between his teeth. The freak... this Tezcatlipoca was the scourge of the world and damned Head of the Household of Gods on top of everything else. Head of the House, my ass! Is there any other place in this pitiful world were the Clown is the King? Hold on, maybe I'm rushing judgement here. How on Earth he got himself  up there is anybody's guess. Everybody hated him! That's for sure, Quetzalcoatl being on the top of the list.  Ptleoatlatl kept chewing for a while hoping that his strong teeth will prove stronger than the sand but to no avail. There was so much more sand than coca paste that he felt as if he was chewing on a soft brick. It was intolerable! Tezcatlipoca  he couldn't think of anybody else playing a prank like this on him. But what could he do? To whom to complain? ...and to make the joke worse the source of the prank looked totally anonymous  Reluctantly Ptleoatlatl spat the concoction into the palm of his hand, took another look as if saying farewell, squeezed it regretfully into some kind of ugly blob and tossed it into the next wave. The shapeless mass made a noisy contact with the water and then ...just floated! Yeah, a real load of sand and spit and yeah, some leaves ...true they float .. but they were just a few!!!  This was dumb! That blob was definitely heavier than water. That much even Ptleoatlatl knew. Look at that, it floats barely touching the water! said to himself  the stunned deity picking the blob out of the water. The bag with the coca leaves was more than half full. He gave it another try this time deliberately filling his mouth with sand and shells and a few leaves and chewed on it until everything was thoroughly bound together. By the end of the day he had a nice pyramid-like pile of blobs floating a couple of palms above the ground. While rinsing his mouth, all Ptleoatlatl could think of was promotion.

On the third Jaguar Day, fifty eighth straight moon years later the first pyramid sailed away toward the East. It was named Eastern Moon and it was five times higher than the Notre Dame de Paris. Ptleotlatl was standing on the top platform performing a routine ritual of Vegan sacrifice. Mostly over-ripe tomatoes and red chilli peppers. Tezcatlipoca was down inside the sweaty quarters of the Giant Rowing Chambers of the Moon Pyramid playing, by all accounts, pranks on himself. Quetzalcoatl was dared to go on a scouting mission during the open sea trials and never came back. Life is great, thought Ptleoatlatl!

In less than a month the Portuguese were to get a terrible shock at the site of a huge floating mountain of stone approaching their shores...

Sasha Meret

October 2013, New York

This is the first story generated by the painting from the series Had The Spaniards Not Come - a hypothetical new Art History where I explore What If  scenarios about how art evolved had certain events not turn the way we know.

The painting is :

"Had The Spaniards Not Come #1" 

Sasha Meret  

Oil and metallic oil paint on canvas;

 2006-2013;  

8' x 3'

Armando Romero 

on Transcendental Wit

There is a hidden little fact written in the secret "Artchemy Codex on How to Make Serious Art Fun", buried somewhere under one of the Yacata pyramids of Tzitzuntzan. It mentions that Hermes was there on several occasions at the traditional Graffiti Residencies hosted by the local goggle-eyed god Tlaloc. Hermes known also as the Trickster, god of transitions and boundaries, traveler between the worlds, bored out of his wits by his classical upbringing was planning one of his stunts on his fellow Olympians. His Temporeal visas mandatory for any time travelling trip show a series of surprising outings with Tlaloc and a third party, an art teacher from Michoacan. They crashed an anniversary celebration of a certain Hyeronimus near s'-Herthogenbosch in The Netherlands. Also, noted was a disturbance at a Spanish Royal Court painting sitting in Madrid in the company of a certain Francisco, A police report of a break in at the  Warner Bros. Studios in Los Angeles listed one black duck missing a shooting, and a summons from NYPD was issued for vandalism in Brooklyn, New York. A little out of the way the same three suspects were recorded by a Star Wars long range scanner soliciting favours from a rather unsavory character named Vader or something at a facility on the planet Naboo. The transcripts of  their visits, also mandatory in time travelling conjecture include some other unexpected names like Garfield, Pokemon, Mighty Mouse just to name a few. Getting a little more serious It is also mentionable their stop over at Gottingen for an intensive class of Transcendental Phenomenology that might have disbanded the party. On each occasion the were seen carrying rolled canvases in spite of strict "No Luggage" regulation. Currently, and we have no idea what that really means when one time-travels The GTA (for Global Time-travelling Agency has them under investigation. The charge is - interfering with their designated timeline.

The naughty trio split after the the German escapade And the GTA agent are working 24/7 to trace the culprits. The main lead were a series of similar graffiti freshly sprayed  on the Moon Pyramid in Teotihuacan, in Plaka on the walls of Acropolis and in Miami on several canvases by a Mexican Artist Armando Romero waiting to be exhibited  at the Gala Kavachnina Gallery. The Graffiti controversy continues to transcend time and one can always guess a trickster hidden behind this manifestation of eclecticism. 

There is no real evidence of Armando Romero being the third party mentioned in the above transcripts. His layering technique may suggest an unusual ease of switching between time periods making him a suspect for GTA prosecution. On the other hand his rich cultural background could justify the fertile cultural grounds revealed in his visual explorations. He is boldly questioning of the long term effects on moral values of radically different cultural juxtapositions. His imagery could stand as trophies of an archeology of the moment where Sin coexists with Irony and his language is made universal through familiar quotations from the History of Art  His references come full circle from line drawings that could have easily been traced by a shaman in a prehistorical cave to explosive calligraphy of graffiti on the walls in a modern metropolis. However, there is a strange synchronicity between the methods described in the Artchemy Codex and the reductionist methods in Romero's neoeclectic compositions where his visual quotations have the tendency to let his imagery floating in pure wit. It is notable that his canvases could also be a serious lessons of how to make art fun thus opening the time-traveling Agency to some degree of leniency.

Sasha Meret

October 2013, New York  , http://kavachnina.com/exhibitions/past/

Clouds of Probabilities

WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2010

Clouds of Probabilities

Right before The Big Bang an ethereal humming was lingering in this so called Improbable Plane.
It could have been the echo of a previous failed attempt at Creation or the residue from a defective muffler from Multiverse X15, or something similar. Fact is that a while later, somewhere in Long Island City, Queens clusters of notes from that improbable source materialized on several sheets of Fabriano paper and a number of sizes of stretched Belgian linen and plywood panels. It was no accident, just another confirmation of Godel's Theory of Incompleteness, this time with pigments, alkyds and mineral spirits. The alchemist in charge, Massimo Kaufman armed with a set of flat brushes and eyedroppers released the elusive harmonies from their immaterial condition to the delight of privileged eyes. Entropy, marching orchestras, stellar ecosystems, Zappa's histrionics converge in a new Braille alphabet for the forbidden pleasures. We are looking at a multiple-layered map where intuition meets control and chemistry and physics blend with poetry. It looks as if an imaginary conversation with a mesmerized audience has been taking place. The audience is asking Massimo to add more and more of the magical dots to his canvas. But he knows better when to stop. One droplet in excess and the whole order of the universe might become disrupted.

Nicholas Veg
May 2010, New York

Mystical Neo-Realism

It may sound New Agey, it may look like a subliminal contradiction, but when four shamans congregate to address the notion of what is real and how to deal with it, this looks like serious business.

The shamania is here to challenge the legality of the laws of physics: how can a gesture become Now-for-Ever an echo; how museums preserve materialized echoes. The shamania collect all the thinkable ideas all the way to an Event Horizon and sometimes even stop for a blink on that hypothetical edge to watch the birth of a star in another Universe. Then they thread a mesh of all the forgotten wishes and desires since time immemorial into a tangible fabric named Freedom.

To be more specific, let's say one of them freezes the staccato of a hypothetical Babylon into the slow moving particles rhythm of a metal plate. Another one catches the bouncing light from it onto a Silicon chip and dips it into a mystical developer that keeps all the possibilities open.

From there it is retrieved by a third one, The Sound Master, who then sets the luminous echoes free to mingle with real Babylon.

Now comes the crazy one who's tracing bits and pieces of dissipated echoes and molds them into a totemic gathering of artifacts reminiscent of the original plate. All this may resonate with Berdyaev's Apokatástasis - that is universal salvation through restoration to the original or primordial condition, with the difference that our metaphysical quadrumvirate is restoring what we call reality to the original pre-Divine form through their exuberant Art. 

There is a long tradition of mysticism in art, if one were to think as far back as the cave paintings of Altamira or Lascaux way up to Brueghel, Caravaggio, Picasso, Dalí or Andrew Wyeth. The difference is that those were only local manifestations of the mystical in a fragmented reality. The Now Mysticism is happening more and more as Global Reality. The concept of Now is present everywhere we can reach with our minds and true Art is the ideal vehicle.

Mirolevich, Vishnyakov, Molochevski and Meret – the aforementioned Neo-Mystics and members of the shamania – gather their bits, pixels and all the particles that can afford a name, into voluptuous clouds of probabilities, which need only an open minded public to become a tangible vibrant Reality.

Now this is one hell of a trip to take on and you're invited! You can call it The Mystical Neo-Realist Tour!

A Short Hronomian History

These are excerpts from Nicholas Veh's notes about one of his momentous intersections with the Hronomian Timeline discovered while uploading a posting to his Facebook page.

It was his first contact with Chian Kai that set it up, when he got his invite  to become friends on FaceBook.  Veh was always doing a routine checkup on any uninvited solicitation coming from the web. He would just check the "about" entries, mutual friends, eventually Google the name, etc. As it often happens, he draw a blank but hey, that was nothing unusual. However, the name, for sentimental reasons if not for anything else made him accept the invite. The resemblance with the name of the former Chinese leader and the night spent in Chiang Kai-shek's bedroom at the general's summer residence during one of his trips in Taiwan made Veh give it a try. From the very beginning Chin Kai was enthusiastic about Veh's art related postings. His comments seemed educated but the choice of words was at least strange. They started exchanging messages and with the increasing interest on both sides switched to chatting. What hit Nicholas most of all was Chian's incredible ignorance in history issues. Any reference of that kind would draw a blank. Again that wasn't exactly unusual,  especially in America, but when an obviously Asian person never heard of Kamikaze ...

Later on he found out that in the Hronomian timeline Kublai Khan attacked Japan a month earlier and the weather was marvelous for a landing...

...

It is commonly accepted among the Hronomian caste of shamans that, with the assumption of a divine intervention the first moment of The Genesis was preceded by a so called Delta Delay. The term imply that all signaling of a beginning be it "Fiat Lux" or whatever, occur with an infinitesimal delay. Technically for a divine maker a delta delay would not be measurable unit, but from a  practical perspective one would equate a delta delay with the smallest time unit one could measure. In contemporary Terrestrial terms that would be a femtoseond added to the beginning of the universe.  In the Hronomian Time Line it is called The Moment and it is the product of the ultimate quanta that is perpendicular on the unique reference point known as NOW. (A footnote in Veh's entry pointed to the traditional representation in a certain Terestrial religion of God's eye enclosed in a Delta sign.)

...

In the early eight hundreds (that is Hronim Time that starts in 1155 our timeline - the assumed date of birth of Genghis Khan) the Hronomians developed the concept of Momenteternity - an intensive exploration of the wave patterns in the widely common Hronomian practice of Total Dynamic Stillness. It was a kind of creatively induced mindfulness that would focus on the unfathomable aspects of a Moment.

The discipline of TDS allowed a vertical probing into a designated moment using the regressive tendency of a basic brain wave towards initial alter-state - the primordial particle. It is something like the opposite of the accelerated expansion of the universe, at a subatomic scale..

...

The Hronomians are a Temporeal culture  That means they manifest a tendency to shift the coordinates of their existence preferably  towards dwelling in a Time-Space continuum, where the manifestation of Time is physically prevalent and Space tends to recede into abstraction. They strive to develop a tri-directional time frame where in addition to past and future they would  focus on exploring the depth of the moment.

One of the most common practices was to bring oneself to such a creative frenzy that the intensity of the basic string vibrations would obliterate any connection with the common reference points of a conventional Terestrial  existence. The past and the future become irrelevant . Any time residue outside the Moment is devoured by the Hronovore covering the surrounding virtual space.

...

...Nicholas Veh, The Hrononaut discovered the point of entry into that enhanced Creative State of Mind that transforms the concept of exit into an entry =  a beginning,  point where from our Newtonian perspective the time stands still. The process of attaining that involves practices as non-referential mindfulness, catatonic event distinction and abepelaid interval constriction ( don't even bother asking what it means). 

...

Initially the Hronomians coexist in both Space-time and Time-space Continuums. 

The Ultimate Quest is to find the Personal Sublime Moment where any deed can be augmented to Cosmic proportions. The trove of a Sublime Moment is confirmed in a ceremonial custom named A-temporal Bridal Communion.  According to Nicholas Veh the courtship ritual for the Hronomians requires the capture of the Hronovore Beast that is inevitably lurking in the vicinity of any moment and use its hide as a part of the ceremonial outfit for the Bridal Ceremony. A successful hunter would be honored with the title Magister Momento - Master of the Moment and would have absolute control over the influence of his past or future in defining the intensity of his chosen Sublime Moment.

The ultimate accomplishment for a Hronomian is defining The Beginning of a Chosen Moment when his or hers physical presence is removed from the current Space-Time Continuum. A reminiscence of his Space related existence is displayed and celebrated by placing a Ceremonial Idol in The Shrine of Hronim. The Idol would be adorned with the hunting outfit worn at the time of The Ultimate Hunt and a slightly tridimensional replica of the captured Hronovore hide that is encoding the hunter's original history and possible futures.              

As expected,there isn't any accurate account of the actual time transgressions . The bits and pieces gathered in the Shrine's database are mostly notes left by Nicholas Veh.

Magister Momento stands beyond the equivalent of an Event Horizon - the all-absorbing moment acting as a Black Hole. Time loses all connection with any physical manifestations and reverts to the pure intelligence  of the very beginning that thought of it, the one preceding the Delta Delay.

Tempore Manducans Bestiae is a creature, for lack of a better word, known only in Time-Space Continuum. It is the only species listed under Hronovores, although that is strongly debatable in the Space-Time alternative. It's territory of activity is in the immediate vicinity of the Moment's Event Horizon. However there are known cases of territorial overlap in the presence of time-compression occurrences associated with Singularities.  The Hronovore confrontations are brutal and instant. There is no time value to the confrontation - not even a Delta Delay. In simpler terms it's a merger. Surprisingly the smaller specimen is usually taking over allegedly due to the creature's anatomy. The grid-like structures with powerful spiral patterns have been identified as similar the ones found in the human Cortex when nano layering it. The mirror finish of the Hronovore structure makes the hunting extremely difficult especially as their presence being detectable only through a parallel mirror device.

Nicholas Veh 

New York, October 2013

The Dream Converter

Dreams remain an unfathomable enigma as far as their provenance or manner of controlling them.  Most likely a brand of subtle energy,  they touch our minds in unpredictable  ways with potentially dire consequences. However they are vital for our mental sanity and in high demand in the diverse aspects of our culture.  For such a reason there is a special caste of individuals capable of harnessing them and giving them a physical presence. They are the so called "dream converters" and one could find them active from Tasmania, Down Under all the way to Minsk, Belarus. Actually one of them - Artem Mirolevich is from Minsk and is currently churning dreams of every imaginable kind in the citadel of all dreams, New York City, where their density can mislead you to believe them for real.
What makes the Mirolevich brand of "dream converting"special is his quest for grandiose visions of almost apocalyptic intensity that are rendered with hallucinating detail. His uniqueness  relies in his capacity of exorcising evil from the most dramatic compositions replacing it with a dash if wit and humor.  Even his gigantic shark roaming above a submerged city  is having a mesmerizing attractive  effect on the viewer.
The real "Dream Converters" are a rare breed. If you find one keep close and share his vision.
The importance of what they are doing is such that no matter of how much they would be paid it still would seem they are working "pro bono".

Sasha Meret, New York, July 2013

Old Ship - Artem Mirolevich

Litho-harmonies in Languedoc

There is an ageless white haired sage dwelling in the heart of Languedoc who's chiseling incessantly a magical formula for capturing time into the crystalline structure of stone. It is a ruthless endeavor  for time can be quite a nefarious foe and actually very few can boast with a definite.result in this kind of quest. One of them named Ariel Moscovici is a long time practitioner of this so called Hrono-Lithography, a practice as ancient as the first gesture of a prehistoric shaman. He inhabits a space where history is in a perpetual echo stasis, so tactile that simple blinking of the eyes seems to leave traces on one's surroundings. His expertise is in capturing time traveling crystalline structures careless enough to pause briefly,inside his sanctuary. He tempers them with his brand of esthetics although he would deny it, maintaining that esthetics to him would be what Ornithology is to birds. Time with an array of multidimensional nuances can be a mesmerizing site and Moscovici, an exquisite tuner of litho-harmonies is placing them at the most auspicious conjectures to increase their resonance. Several time units ago he managed to place a eight-part formula in the proximity of the tallest structure built on the Northern shore of the island of Formosa - four split bubbles of pure marble time traveling from Palumbrian to an unknown destination. There is a debate going on about the symbology revealed and the long term effect it may have on the viewers. But there have been accounts that it is just enough to slant your eyes at the right angle and you can glimpse into an age when a nameless ocean was trying to mimic the sky.

Sasha Meret, New York, September 2013