A Chapter from “Cartels”.
On October 21, 2024, Vision Forum together with our partners will organise a release event for Cartels, a publication that we have produced together with Hamadryades in France. The release event, along with an exhibition of some of the work, will be held at La Galerie de la Moulinette in Paris’s 18th arrondissement. The book is written by the philosopher, writer and art historian Laurent Deveze.
The book constitutes a kind of self-portrait of the author based on his collection of art work. Each of the 38 artworks describes a journey of how they have been created and acquired and includes artwork from Sweden and France, but also also Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast, Poland, South Africa and many more. The book is a wonderful poetic and provocative mix of stories, memories and philosophic reflections of how artwork shape a human being.
Three of the chapters have been beautifully translated by Katherine Lockwood. She has also generously given us the permission to present them on our website. Here is a first chapter “Babel on the Vistula.” Enjoy and come back soon for more!
BABEL ON THE VISTULA (Krzysztof Skorczewski)
The snow enveloped Krakow like a great fur coat. The city paraded its Sunday best, emerging from its Masses.
The papal city had ceased to shiver from the cold. The staggeringly low temperatures had risen three or four degrees to allow a white layer to form, with baroque flair, on the intricate outlines of the city center’s thousand statues.
I would not have written any of this at the time: of Claire, in her heels and long dress as we left our box seats at the Slowacki Opera, when her elegant, former dancer’s footsteps met with a kingdom of ice. Nor would I have mentioned the immaculate houppelande encircling the Rynek, like ermine setting off the sparkling jewels on the crowns of the world’s most powerful monarchs.
No, I had other things on my mind. I was being sent on an urgent mission from winter’s depths straight into the stifling furnace of an austral summer. Poland to South Africa in one leap, and in the middle of January. My farewell party had been thrown together in a frenzy. As a parting gift, friends from my now former institution gave me a logo for the one I would have to set up in South Africa: the IFAS1.
My friends had chosen a zebra bearing two discreet stripes (one blue and one red to symbolize the French tricolore). The entire background was composed of lined brushstrokes characteristic of the beautiful animals, blacks and whites reconciled into a single pelt. Tamed, perhaps, but still wild. A zebra will never be a horse.
And so I felt blessed in spite of the haste surrounding my new job placement, which was going to leave a seven-month-pregnant Claire to manage moving the family from one end of the planet to the other before the arrival of our last cub, Cyrille, who would be born in Madiba’s homeland.
Anyway, it was snowing. Hard. A quintessential winter in the beautiful, alluring and deeply romantic Poland.
I opened the door to a proud, bearded fellow. A package wrapped in newspaper was tucked under his arm.
“Bon voyage, my friend,” he said. “Don’t forget about us too quickly (a plea I heard every time I left somewhere anew) and hold onto that crazy passion of yours to persuade people, your fierce desire to overcome misunderstanding in all its forms!”
Once his message was delivered, heavy with meaning, I barely had time to thank him before he was back on the tramway, a red machine sending puffs of snow clouds in its wake. It was a sight reminiscent in this newly post-Cold War era of former USSR streetscapes.
I believe that Jan was, very long ago, a Dean of Fine Arts in Warsaw. With both the wisdom and modesty of virtuous individuals, he fled before making an emotional scene. The gift he had imparted was by the budding Polish artist Krzysztof Skorczewski.
Evening was descending upon the former royal capital as I opened the package. The Wawel was already blotted up by the night, the Vistula beginning to look like a river of gasoline (or with my next destination in mind, the glossy skin of a black mamba).
It was nearly five o’clock somewhere far off east as I impatiently tore through the pages of the Rzeczpospolita before it revealed itself to me in all its golden glory, as inspiring as our cupola: Babel.
Its young creator, already a master sketch artist and engraver, had taken my breath away so many times before that I might have been indifferent, as accustomed as I was to his work. But in that moment, I was deeply moved.
Jan and I had so often discussed this artist in the “pods,” clandestine basement cafés that had flourished during the Austrian occupation and had continued to play their rebellious role throughout the Soviet era. We had many spirited debates in those cafés, frequently about the impossible task imparted to cultural diplomats to make two irreconcilable, nearly untranslatable, languages work together, especially when it is not just a matter of linguistics.
And yet, we were constantly rebuilding Babel. We often spoke of Albert Cohen’s League of Nations, the very one that, despite being mocked or vilified, still managed to bring the Ethiopian Negus, the King of Kings, to the podium after the Italian fascist invasion. Likewise, Dominique de Villepin, during the time that I was stationed in the United States, delivered a historic speech at the UN about an ancient country called Babel: the dream of a humanity capable of expressing itself and better still, comprehending itself regardless of ideological languages and worldly divisions, finally making collective endeavors possible. To conquer the heavens.
Will people get along in South Africa? Will they turn it into a new Babel? This gift really hit home. To this day, this astonishing engraving has served as my compass. It’s a reminder not to remain affiliated to a monomaniacal culture, never to cease rebuilding Babel and finding fulfillment in the labor that it entails. A multidisciplinary Babel which unites artists, musicians, dancers and photographers alike. A Babel of civilizations; an Agora to all the Magicians of the Earth. By daring to exhibit primitive art and contemporary art, both sacred and secular, the IFAS likely owes much to that evening. The gift and the potlatch compelled me to create a multiracial, multidisciplinary place without borders. It’s not a work of art, it’s an agenda. This gift was, and remains, my here and now.
Perhaps I should have given more thought to those small, mysterious people who, quite honestly, could either be the tower’s builders or its annihilators. Babel
always riles up the dogmatic, and efforts toward unification constantly clash with the aprioristic prejudices of isolated thinking. The tower of Babel, akin to its beautifully engraved likeness, rebuilds and destroys itself all at once because it cannot be seen as a bastion keep. It is a true work of art and in that sense, a perpetual work in progress. Its incompleteness is the sign of its unfailing commitment to something we know is lost yet cannot bring ourselves to abandon. This ancestral castle, so objectionable to the eyes of the rational world, is so deeply rooted within us that to forsake it would be our demise.
This structure—half tower, half lighthouse—whose silhouette at times seems excessively dungeon-like and at others, like a temple rising out of the darkness, is a winding staircase leading to a torch lit by an eternal flame.
One day, understanding will take the place of waging wars. Perhaps it is this very flame that makes the frame glimmer.
This parting gift is an everlasting assessment and a constant reminder not to forget ecumenical matters. No Absolute can be achieved with the deliberate ignorance of an elsewhere—in the eradication and denial of an Other—for that would defeat its purpose. Heresy, as it is understood and defined, reduces any dogma to mere opinion. It’s no surprise that this tower is perpetually under construction. Once completed, towers often end up as mere watchtowers; unflattering symbols to crown the failure of diplomats.
Translated from French by Katherine Lockwood