2. Beau
a) Attractive
b) Female companion
c) Male companion
d) None of the above

3. Calligraphy
a) Fancy penmanship
b) A form of art
c) Elaborate drawing
d) None of the above

4. Dekko (slang)
a) A glance
b) A smirk
c) An attack
d) None of the above

5. Duress
a) Persuasion
b) Threat
c) Painful
d) Both b & c

6. Gauntlet
a) Temptation
b) A sort of weapon
c) A challenge
d) Both b & c

7. Lingam (Sanskrit)
a) A temple
b) Phallus
c) Masculine gender
d) Both b & c

8. Perceptive
a) Related to light
b) Serious
c) Showing keenness in understanding
d) None of the above

9. Punctilious
a) Unreliable
b) Attentive to formalities
c) Untidy
d) None of the above

10. Zing
a) Energy or enthusiasm
b) A type of tropical fruit
c) An intoxicant
d) None of the above

Answers:

1. (a) 2. (c) 3. (a) 4. (a) 5 (b) 6 (c) 7 (d) 8 (c) 9. (b) 10 (a)

Your Score:
8-10 Excellent
5-7 Good
1-4 Need improvement

⁽⁰⁾

Being is as it were a torrent, in and out of which bodies pass, coalescing and cooperating with the whole, as the various parts in us so with another.
—Marcus Aurelius

The ancient Master
didn’t try to educate the people,
But kindly them to not-know.

When they think that they know the answers,
people are difficult to guide.
When they know that they don’t know.
People can find their own way...
—Tao Te Ching

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
—Gibran, The Prophet

We have much to do together.
Let us do it in wisdom and love and joy.
Let us make this the human experience.
—Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul

⁽⁰⁾

Because somewhere along the line we lose our sense of awe, surprise and wonder that the little inquisitive child unabashedly embraces. Most of us think (social conditioning!!) that the lone purpose of our life is to have a stable job, get married, have a family and nurture the family members. Intersperse it all with entertainment—Visit or hang around with friends, read some famous “highly recommended” book, watch a movie or that soap opera. Amusingly that becomes routine after a while too. So what? Is there escape? At one point we are too lazy to even make new friends or talk to new people. There seems to be no need for that. Also, too much work.

Those who never lose it, actually never lose the child in them. That inquisitiveness, prying, awe and wonder in every phenomenon in life that allure the baby. With the passage of time, it might seem unnecessary, but it is only that which makes you different—not only does it refresh every Day but also augments our persona in toto.

This life edifice is getting old and dreary
Let us re-erect it
So we fine new reasons to live
Let us do a makeover
Spot the dots that make us wonder
Let us be that foolish kid
Once again let us be an alien here
And take the time to break the ice.

Just wondering,
Manjit

⁽⁰⁾

Because Earth feels the presence of the Sky
And Sky is also aware of Earth. . .
It is all a propos this awareness, this sense of sensing. . .

A Smile
To smile is to expand
A flower blossoms, expands, smiles. . .
Give something to someone, smiles extend
Be everywhere smiles, spread out everywhere. . .

⁽⁰⁾

Wait, didn't Darwin make that breakthrough well over a century ago? Certainly, but we must never forget that most of our understanding of biology stems from this original discovery. As geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

That light shone brightly in 2005. In the fall, researchers published the DNA sequence of the entire chimpanzee genome, enabling scientists to compare the genetic structure of humans to our closest living relatives. This research will not only help us understand human evolution, but could provide important clues as to why humans are so much more susceptible than chimpanzees are to problems like heart disease, AIDS and malaria.

Other research in 2005 focused on the evolutionary development of different species and how species split into two. From birds like the European blackcap, to fish like the stickleback, and insects like the fruit fly, researchers gained new insights into how evolution works and what causes species to stay together or become something new.

One key insight has been the increased understanding of the importance of "noncoding" DNA in speciation. This DNA does not contain instructions needed to make proteins and had no known function, so it was often labeled "junk." But we now know that the biggest genetic differences between chimpanzees and humans are found in noncoding DNA, and research into fruit flies has found that physical traits unique to certain fruit fly species can be produced in others by selectively swapping noncoding DNA.

Evolutionary research is thus vital to understanding our world. That's why scientists across the U.S. were thrilled in December when a federal judge prevented the teaching of intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania biology classes. The judge reasoned that the theory, which claims a "higher force" than evolution is responsible for the creation and development of complex organisms, is nothing more than poorly disguised creationism.

In spite of the court victory, it was a challenging year for science education in the United States. As Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, recently wrote: "The rising tide of evangelical Christianity and its alliance with a conservative political movement seemed to foreshadow a national suspicion of science or a deep confusion about what science is or isn't."

Other criticisms were even more direct. A report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington D.C., for example, warned, "Science education in America is under attack." The report gave failing grades for science education in 15 states, including Alabama, where biology textbooks are adorned with stickers that proclaim evolution is a "controversial" theory.

Discussing intelligent design is certainly appropriate at a university level. In fact, one study published this fall in Bioscience found that university students exposed to arguments for both evolution and for intelligent design were actually more likely to favour evolution than those taught evolution alone. In other words, when it comes to advanced education, addressing belief systems rather than ignoring them could be an important teaching tool.

However, it's completely inappropriate to introduce religion into science studies at a younger age when capacity for critical thought has yet to develop. Canadians should be thankful that our country is by and large free of such debates. But the fact that it again reared its head so close to home means we have to be even more vigilant in ensuring that politics and religion do not cloud our teaching of science. Because when that happens, it's students who lose the most.

Originally published on January 20, 2006.

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

⁽⁰⁾

Although the Slovenian poet and cultural analyst Ales Debeljak spent enough time in America to acquire a Ph.D. and a wife, devotes one of four chapters of The Hidden Handshake to a lament that Slovenian art and history are almost unknown in America, and concedes that “at least since World War II, America’s cultural importance has transcended any single tradition; it has become a stage for the entire world,” he is, as his subtitle indicates, much more seriously concerned with the cultural and political roles, or their absence, of the newest nations within the European Union.

Debeljak is particularly concerned by the EU’s failure to adopt some of the values of the nation-state, in his view a European creation, which at its best transformed nationalism into patriotism, allowed not only the existence but the flourishing of minority cultures, and fostered, through its cosmopolitan atmosphere, fruitful multicultural competence. (He is, of course, aware of the ways in which Germanic culture in particular inhibited Slovene political and cultural life, and he worries about majority languages becoming the exclusive vehicles of political discourse in the EU.)

In fact, Debeljak seems to be a thoroughgoing euroskeptic, and in view of last year's French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution, his analysis seems not only acute, but prophetic. He cites four reasons for skepticism: worry about diminished state boundaries; desire to protect ethnic identity; a “democratic deficit” in the management of EU affairs, from Brussels down; and “the failure to form a ‘common mental framework.’ ”

The last concern pervades the book. Debeljak maintains that the impulses behind the EU are primarily technological and economic; that “Europe” is defined as Western Europe, which accounts for the EU’s failure to intervene in Bosnia; and that “Old Europe” is acting as if it were an American gated community, constructed to exclude lesser cultural, ethnic, and economic breeds, accepting the implications of divisions which date back not just to the Cold War and the Schengen Treaty but to the Treaty of Trianon, which concluded World War I.

To counteract this exclusiveness – and to ensure a place for Slovenia and other smaller nations – Debeljak proposes the construction of “a common grand narrative,” “a substantial imaginative framework of general identification, material for ‘common dreams’ that can give all the citizens of Europe a certain minimum of existential meaning and emotional density, through which we recognize a commitment to something that transcends us as individuals with particular identities.”
Just how this is to come about, and what would result, is not at all clear, and Debeljak admits that “such a construction is idealistic, hinged as it is on a search for balance between ethnic and cultural traditions on the one hand, and loyalty to a supranational, overarching cultural habitus on the other” before lapsing into near-duckspeak about the “mutual acceptance of a publicly shared sphere within which such reciprocity can take place.”

Happily, this kind of language is rare, and much of the book is devoted less to the making of a new European consciousness than to the definition and preservation of the cultural importance of small nations, specifically Slovenia, their languages, and their cultural heritages. In fact, Debeljak begins by discussing issues of national identity, particularly important to Slovenes because, beginning with independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, they have been riding “the last car on the last train of nationalism.” Like any citizen of a small country, he is, sometimes reluctantly, aware of the necessity for “concentric circles of identity.” Once part of the Habsburg Empire, then of various avatars of Yugoslavia, now of the European Union, Slovene writers must either find a way to export their visions or to retreat within their own borders. On the one hand, “liberal tolerance" (as distinct from cosmopolitanism) "camouflages what is essentially something passive” and “cannot be fully divorced from a self-congratulatory and highly patronizing attitude.” At its worst, it can reduce a minority culture to the status of folklore, or to Disneyfication. An example is the German writer Peter Handke’s desire to keep Serbia isolated so as to retain its charm. [Blind to the Truth, 20 July 2005]

Looking up and out rather than down, Slovene writers must neither overvalue other traditions nor, like Hungary's nepi or "folk," who wish to concentrate exclusively on local traditions and ethnicity, ignore them in ultra-nationalist fervor. Debeljak realizes “that the boundaries of my language [are,] to a considerable degree, the boundaries of my world” – not just “linguistic skills” but “a whole symbolic, mental, and social experience deposited in the layers of a nation’s historical existence and collective mentality” – and that they constitute “the encapsulation of a metaphysical worldview.” On a less abstract level, one’s language allows one to give names to everything, to understand inside jokes, and to follow the implications of subtle cultural references – the kind of things that can make poetry untranslatable.

As a result, in Debeljak’s desire to make literature an important instrument for constructing the “common grand narrative,” he rejects purely esthetic approaches to literature. Postmodernism blurred “the distinction between the pragmatic and artistic dimensions,” so that “Postmodern art is no longer the embodiment of an alternative world that derives meaning from its aesthetic and ethical tensions with the existing order; on the contrary, postmodern art by and large supports, maintains, and justifies the existing order.” In Debeljak’s view, “the artist brings together a variety of existential, social, and national aspects of experience in a search for meaningful balance.”

Debeljak does not always follow a consistent line of argument, nor was it his intention. The four chapters that constitute this book, revised and expanded for an American audience from a collection published in five Central European countries, are conceived as “a kind of intellectual poetry,” “neither fully a work of academic scholarship nor fully a work of creative nonfiction.” The book’s appeal should be similarly diverse, for it speaks of problems common to the so-called New Europe, presents a challenge to the older nations of the EU, and, one hopes, will shake at least some Americans out of their insularity. If Debeljak presents problems more clearly than he does solutions, that is the nature of essays, a form whose tentativeness seems particularly attractive in the current context of slogans, wild assertions, and lies. And his search for “the hidden handshake of solidarity” amid so much division can only be seen as heartening.

The Hidden Handshake: National Identity and Europe in the Post-Communist World
by Ales Debeljak. Translated by Ales Debeljak and Rawley Grau.
New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 123 pages.

Robert Murray Davis is professor emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught English literature. He has been a visiting lecturer at universities in Hungary, Yugoslavia, France, and Germany.

Originally published in Transitions Online on Jan 18, 2006.

⁽⁰⁾

Together with experts from a dozen countries – from Brazil to Pakistan - we took part in a conference of the Portugese Institute for Strategic Studies. In the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ahmad Khalidi, the editor of a prestigious Palestinian publication and the scion of one of the most distinguished families in Jerusalem, also took part.

In my lecture I criticized the reluctance of Europe to exert pressure for peace. I said that this attitude was “scandalous”. Khalidi, on his part, also harshly criticized the Europeans.

When it was Moratino’s turn to speak, he reacted angrily. How do you have the impertinence to complain about Europe? He asked, raising his voice. Where is the Israeli peace movement that should have changed the political situation in Israel? Why is its voice not heard? Do you want Europe to do your job for you? And, addressing Khalidi: You want Europe to do something for you? Then first of all please put an end to terrorism! If you are not able to do this, don’t blame Europe! Blame yourself! If both of you do your part, Europe will do its share, too!

(By the way, during the official dinner, Moratinos recounted that after the failure of the Camp David summit, the Europeans talked the Americans into setting up a Clinton-Arafat meeting. Arafat was due to fly to Washington on January 1, 2001. But Ehud Barak opposed it so violently, that the meeting was cancelled and the Taba talks took place instead.)

Moratinos was quite right in his criticism. We tend indeed to blame others for our own failures. We cannot demand that foreigners – whether Europeans or Americans – do our job for us. If the peace camp does not constitute a political power in Israel, we should not blame others. The same goes for the Palestinians.

After the debate we shook hands. I honestly admitted that he was right. Khalidi did the same. But in recent weeks, things have happened on all four fronts – Israeli, Palestinian, American and European – which may indicate that matters are beginning to move.

On the Israeli front, the most high profile event is the launching ceremony for the “Geneva Understandings” that is scheduled for this coming Monday. After the young men who refuse army service in the occupied areas, the revolt of the airforce pilots, the Ayalon-Nusseibeh initiative, the declaration of the four former Security Service chiefs and the warning of the Chief-of-Staff, the Geneva initiative is a further step in the same direction.

For three years, the extra-establishment peace forces stood alone on the battlefield. We protested, demonstrated, maintained contact with the Palestinians, aroused world opinion. All this time, the bigger, establishment-connected peace movement remained in a state of collapse and uttered hardly a squeak. The brutality of the occupation intensified from day to day, Sharon did whatever he wanted, the opposition was comatose. The slogan was “There is no one to talk to”.

Now there is an awakening. It seems that the public has had enough of the bloody confrontation. It understands by now that there is no military solution and that the confrontation is destroying our economy and increasing poverty. The Geneva Initiative has come at exactly the right time to express this new mood.

Its strongest point is educational. It shows that there is indeed “someone to talk to” and that there is a model for peace, with which both sides can live. It will make a big contribution to the forming of a new national consensus.

Its disadvantage is that it has no solid political basis. It is boycotting the radical peace forces on the left, while being attacked on the right by the Labor Party hacks, led by Shimon Peres. The political establishment suspects that it will serve as an instrument for Yossi Beilin in his efforts to create a new political party, after losing his place in Labor.

What worries me is that it is not written to capture anyone’s imagination. It is a lawyers’ document, dry and matter-of-fact. That is good and that is bad. Its movers declare that it is “not a marriage agreement, but rather a writ of divorce.” Meaning divorce between Israelis and Palestinians. That is the very opposite of our own message: “Two States – One Future”.

But all in all, this is a positive initiative, coming at the right time and opening the way for more initiatives to come. It seems that our ice-age is drawing to an end. Even Sharon senses this. Suddenly he is eager to meet Abu-Ala, he is talking about “unilateral steps”. One should not believe a word he says, but the fact that he utters such words shows that something is indeed changing.

On the Palestinian front, too, there is a change. Abu-Ala, in close cooperation with Yasser Arafat, is working on a new Hudna (truce) with the Palestinian factions, this time one that will be linked with a Hudna with Israel. All sides will undertake to stop all acts of violence, and Sharon will be asked to make meaningful concessions.

If that succeeds – a very big “if” – then conditions may be ripe for a deep change in public opinion on both sides, which is without doubt a pre-condition for any real movement towards peace.

On the American front, interesting things are happening, too.

All the experts predicted that with the approach of the elections, Bush would abstain from anything liable to arouse the anger of the Jewish and the Fundamentalist-Christian lobbies. But lo and behold, Washington is giving public, and almost official, support to the Nusseibeh-Ayalon and the Geneva Initiatives. President Bush expressed relatively strong disapproval of Sharon’s acts, side by side with his routine condemnation of the Palestinians. He also deducted a symbolic sum from the American loan guaranties given to Israel.

That is not much. In fact, it is very little. But we are not pampered – even small American gestures can mean a lot. For Sharon, his American connection is the jewel in his crown, more important than anything else. The smallest change will set off an alarm in his head.

Perhaps the most interesting change has taken place in Europe, of all places. At the time of the incident with Moratinos I did not know – nor did he, I believe – that something was going to happen concerning us.

Six years ago, Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements. We said: “Every Shekel for the settlements is a Shekel against peace.” We composed a list of their products and distributed it widely. Tens of thousands of families joined the boycott.

Our aim was to prevent the transfer of Israeli factories to the occupied territories, where the government (under both Labor and Likud) gave them huge subsidies. We told them: in the end you are going to lose, because the Israeli and foreign markets will be closed to you.

Our initiative has caused, so it seems, the Europeans to wake up. Goods “made in Israel” are exempt from custom duties in Europe, but the trade agreement with the European Union expressly excludes goods produced beyond the pre-1967 border, the so-called Green Line. The Israeli government ignored this stipulation and broke it flagrantly. The European officials saw this, gnashed their teeth and closed their eyes, because some European governments (including Germany and Holland) obstructed any action against Israel.

Now this has changed. Lately, the Europeans have demanded that every suspect Israeli firm deposit the equivalent of the potential customs duties until it proves that it is not located beyond the Green Line.

The exporters complained loudly. This week the Israeli government gave in and announced that from now on, the actual place of origin will be clearly marked on all goods exported to Europe.

At long last, a resolute European action. Enterprises dependent on exports to Europe will be compelled to leave the settlements and return to Israel proper. Hallelujah!

As Galileo said: And yet it does move.

Originally published in Gush Shalom.

⁽⁰⁾

We began discussing the way in which creative work begins within the
physical body, frequently in the form of muscular tensions. During the
gestation of the work this tensions have to be contained within the
body.

Antony Gormley:
I believe this. It's like giving birth. This thing is held and given
form though being registered in the body. There is an accommodation in
the body of the thing we have to do.

F. David Peat:
The body plays a big role in your work. When you are making a cast what
exactly do you do in preparation?

Gormley:
I try not to get too.... This morning we made the case for Angel. The
period of preparation was very important. I knew it had to be with the
chest fully inflated. I had to concentrate very, very hard on keeping
the vertical that goes into the ground, and on the idea of the
extension. The idea of the front of the body being extended. And for
the first time I used mirrors as a register. As a matter of fact I put
my back out!

Peat:
Part of this space is not external. It's an internal space that the
body occupies and we don't see from the outside.

Gormley:
It's the other side of appearance. I was reading a paper by Stephen
Levension, director of a school of anthropology. He wrote a paper on
Kant, turning up to a tribe of Navahos.

There are two theories about space - Newtonian absolute and
independent. Then Leibnitz who said it is relationship. Kant said both
may be true but its only experienced subjectively and our whole way of
thinking about left right, front etc is in relation to our bodies and
we project that onto space.

I started thinking that all of that can be inverted. Our bodies are
created by the potential of three dimensions. We become registers of an
idea about space that is only experienced by the body. The space I'm
interested in, and try to enter, is adimensional. It doesn't have this
quality of dimension and it makes no sense to say "in front, behind,
left, right" You loose all sense of those kinds of coordinates.

That enlightenment idea of understanding the principles by which life
is sustained has little to do with the space I'm interested in. Its a
kind of ...a darkness without fear. It may contain the possibility of
evil but in some curious way, because you have entered voluntarily, the
experience of it is about potential and power. Just as the spatial
coordinates we use to make sense of the outside have to be left behind
so too do moral coordinates.

I was once talking about the darkness of the body and someone said,
"oh, you mean evil." But no, I mean that darkness we carry with us
always that is neither evil or good but is the space of consciousness
within the body.

Peat:
Jung spoke about the shadow

Gormley:
For him its the other side of animus , the negative side of the
projected personality. I don't think I read the darkness of the body in
psychological terms either but in phenomenological terms. It is a place
that has no dimensions.

I was very, very lucky as a child to have these powerful experiences of
the space of the body because I was always sent off to go to sleep in
these light-filled rooms, with a balcony. I did not need to sleep but
would lie there and explore this space which was both incredibly
claustrophobic and tiny but then began to expand and expand.

Peat:
Hmm. So what of Anish Kapoor's voids?

Gormley:
When I saw them first I thought, "I don't need to work anymore". He's
made a phenomenal demonstration the thing I wanted everyone to intuit
without wanting to show it. I was as affected as everyone else. I
thought they were breathtaking - the unlimited within the limited. I
felt he has materialized the thing implicit in all my work.

Since then I realized that the thing I have to offer is this
reflexivity that is not about ....The problem about Anish's work and
James Turrel is that is becomes the demonstration of something like a
mystical experience produced by tricks of light or absence of light. I
would rather the hidden remained hidden. The work makes an absolute
division. It undermines the dominance of appearance, not puncturing it.

The degree to which my work is unsatisfactory as a representation is
the degree to which it is asking you to look for something in yourself
that can empathize with the inner space of the work which is not an
object. I.e. the degree as a representation because we look..., well,
"the body in Western Art". We look for beauty and a certain kind of
likeness. My work doesn't give likeness, or beauty in any understood
way. It really presents the body as a condition, not as a given
identity. It should become a catalyst.

I want the circulatory of involvement. Look at the work ask, "what is
it doing here"? "How is it in space?" "What is its dialogue with
space?" "Is there an interior/exterior tension? " Then reflectively you
ask yourself the same thing, "What is the relationship of my interior?"

The impossible thing I'm trying to do is accept that we live in the
world of the visible but make it unsatisfactory enough that behind the
visible is some other kind of potential that does not exist in the
sculpture but exists in you the viewer.

But maybe all this is a bit too airyfairy.

Peat:
With some sculpture you walk around and explore. Some push you into a
position in space. Your work does put me into a position

Gormley:
I would like it to do both. But all of the work is relatively axially.
The space so is confrontational, and then you circle and navigate and
then come back to one to one a kind of registration.

Peat:
Last time I visited your studio you had several pieces around the
walls. It was like an energy field. The internal space creates an
external space of relationship.

Gormley:
In the past I tried to deal with this by replacing the surface
structure of skin and hair etc. By a structure oriented to vertical and
horizontal axes, a sort of matrix. Implied into this is the body of the
planet.

Peat:
That response to mass, I feel it in the solar plexus. It is
kinesthetic.

Gormley:
The way in which the work affects you somatically is strongest when
things are off balance or standing on the wall. I.e. levers the room
out of its repose, gives the idea is everything moving and nothing is
fixed.

Peat:
Does this also subvert the natural reaction to look for likeness?

Gormley:
Anything that makes the viewer more conscious of his own weight,
movement in space, his center of gravity while in constant motion. You
are always falling when walking. That idea of human motion being
precarious I like the work top be still, silent and fixed but often
tipped very close to be off its center of gravity. You think twice
about taking for granted your own relationship to it. It is to
encourage a reflexivity that is not about looking.

Peat:
A clown with big boots is very disturbing.

Gormley:
That's a very, very good image. Its funny because its absurd. The
proportions are not as they should be. Yet in some curious way we all
do those things mentally - in dreams or states of yearning. That's what
made me make works like - the extended arms. It's a very, very common
experience.

I remember the last time I had serious dentistry. I was on my bike and
had the sensation I was rising until I was 20 ft. It was a clear
sensation. I was in an extended body. I've had that feeling in other
places as well. I wanted to give those natural sensations... the life
of the imagination.

The sensate information from the matrix of the body is not always in
sync with the .... for example, Leonardo's inscribed body is an
expression of Plantonic absolutes. But our experience is not like
that. Inside us there is always something else being born. We have
bodies that are very good, provisional habitations for the spirit. We
use them and through our time in the mind and the body we are making
room or creating another kind of being. Those experiences of extension
from the body are signs of the potentiality of that process.

Then there's that idea of who we are and what we look like. Your
physiognomy belongs to me more than to you because I'm looking. The
world of appearances is a shared communication. Where we derive energy
in order to take part in the shared world of appearances is from the
other side of them. I want to turn things round, or make you feel maybe
there is somewhere outside the outside, or there are areas of
experience that are independent of the functional side of the personal.
I don't know whether this darkness is really collective.

Part of me would like to believe in the Teravada Buddhist tradition -
that you can transmit love as a vibration which is independent of any
object. It radiates out. It is registered in that space of the darkness
of the body, rather than in the other world, the world of daily life,
external appearances. I think that makes me feel there is a kind of
collective experience of the inner space of the body. It's dangerous to
think that kind of universal...everyone has a different relationship
with the internal body.

Peat:
Do you see that realization in the art of other cultures

Gormley:
It's in the wonderful Kymer heads. All of those south east Asian
Buddhist sculptures have it. You find it occasionally in Western art.
Rodin's "Age of Bronze" has it. He had it for one moment then lost it.
He pushed. He was accused of casting it from life. He had a Belgian
soldier who posed for a year and a half and nearly went mad. He is
looking up and is sort of holding a spear but isn't. His eyes are
closed and it becomes this internal moment of realization. All the
attributes have been taken away that identified it with the 19th
allegorical school and it was replaced by an idea about internal space.

Peat:
The idea of history has gone.

Gormley:
That is important to me. It's why the darkness of the body is
important. It's completely non conditional. People in the West are
extremely frightened about this. It is only accessible through direct
physical relationship and it's not put there or contextualized. It
seems to many to be a denial of the whole positivistic and progressive
idea about Western civilization. There has been an enormous resistance
to my work because it is ahistorical.

In a way I'm accused of all things I'm not doing - i.e. looking for an
ideal body. But I say look again. It's far from ideal. It's the body I
am born with. Then they say, "why is it generic?" And I say, "that's a
function of making a case for something". It's inside that carries the
index of the particular, the outside is just the brick.

Peat:
Do you see other artists trying to do the same thing?

Gormley:
In terms of painting Bryce Modern does it beautifully. His idea about a
surface that beams out. You are invited to register yourself against
this field of color.

(Then off tape he refers to Rothko.
Side B
Gormley feels that Rothko is refined.)

Gormley:
....I'm here for a while. How can I make an account for the world?
Rothko is at the tail end of the sublime and is very refined. He feels
he's started from first principles and there is nothing to be refined
about. Trying to make distance to count for something.

I'm aware of history of art but the thing is to be as direct as
possible. I love Brancusi but it's the opposite, someone honing away,
an abstraction that comes from purification of form which ends up being
about reflected light and surfaces. I'm going the other way. If
Brancusi and Cezanne used light to supercede distance, my ambition is
to deal with darkness and the distance is...I don't know if I'm
interested in distance at all. I want people to feel they're inside the
work.

Peat:
Brancusi and Cezanne draw a great deal on vision. Their work demands
the eye but in your work these seems to be a great deal for a blind
person.

Gormley:
I think I'm part of a critique of the visual per set - that idea that
you may use the visual sense as a basis. But it has to be verified by
other forms that are to do with feeling - awareness of density. The
stimulus, the way you may feel the density comes from the vision and
you respond physically.

Peat:
I think there is also a synesthesia involved in the way I respond to
your work - to the lead or the iron. I have a certain taste in my mouth
when I look at lead, I can fell its malleability.

Gormley:
Yes, and when I use iron I'm aware it is an earth material. It has a
strong gravity. It has a relationship with the liquid core of the
earth. I think humans do this well, this recognition. We can't get away
from it. But I don't want to deny vision. It is a primary sense. But
what do you use it for? For part of a wider spectrum? I'd like to feel
that I'm setting up a landscape, not just to look at but to walk
through and become aware of the different fields.

Peat:
I was listening to a talk by the film director, Ken Russel, who has
recently been making radio plays. He says that says vision can be
shielded, that we can protect ourselves from shock, but that sound is
more immediate and direct. So maybe some of these sensations you are
talking about are internal and experienced in a more direct way while
vision remains external and projected.

Gormley:
Yes, I like that a lot. Sound being in some way something you are
immersed it. It need not have an identifiable source. The sound of
water in an underground cave, you are in that sound and the sound is in
you. I'd like to feel the sculpture does that. It's being within being.
It's a small and inert catalyst, a bit of matter used to catalyze your
sense of being immersed in light and matter. Through the work you may
become aware of the breath passing though the channels of your nose, or
the weight running though your knees. Aware of the world that you
inhabit and your aliveness within.

Its odd that I feel certain sculpture can do this so well, because its
the most difficult medium of all. It's so dumb, such a stumbling block
for most people. Its a bit of the material world that causes you to
look at it and where it is and how it is, in a way that also causes you
to look at yourself.

I don't know. I think art in many ways is being hijacked by a limited
idea. You see in those societies that don't want to be literate, they
transfer their shared experiences in other ways. It's perfectly natural
to paint the body and not so much decorate the shared world but make it
responsive to thought. In "Field" and in "Angel of the North" it's
about trying, in way, to liberate art from this very, very limited
world of the art gallery where things are so clinically and
specifically contexturalized.

[Note: Field consists of a very large number of small terracotta
figures that totally fill the room of a gallery to confront the viewer.
Gormley has made a number of versions of Field, in each case using
ordinary people from the local community to mould the clay figures.]

Peat:
Satish Kumar, from Schumacher College has a story about his mother
weaving a shawl for his sister. The sister found it so beautiful that
she told her mother it was too beautiful to wear and she would hang it
on the wall. The mother said, "when you put beautiful things on a wall,
you put ugly things on your body". Kumar feels that our society is
behaving the same way, the more we collect things in galleries the more
ugly our daily world becomes.

Gormley:
Is so weird. It's the trophy thing. Somehow having an animal's head on
the wall or a souvenir is more important than having gone, or having
seen an animal alive. Things should be quite natural.

Peat:
There is a similar issue with much Native American art. Iroquois grave
markers are supposed to remain outside until they rot and disappear.
This is a big problem for museums who want to conserve such objects.

Gormley:
I like the idea that I'm temporary borrowing, like I do with my body,
from the planet's matter/energy and chain of being. I borrow a few bits
of material that I try to shape. In the same way I try to shape my
life, or my life ties to shape me. Then what happens to the art does
not really matter. I really like the idea that Field belongs back in
the earth It is to be buried or to melt back into the earth. The iron
is strong but it is not protected from oxidation. I'd like one to be in
a tank of water that would disappear. It's a temporary record of a
moment in life. It may extent the image of that life but it has to go
back into the cycle of things.

Peat:
But there is also an element of accident involved. Some things are
projected by nature, like Cave paintings. Maybe you could put it under
the sea so coral grows round it.

Gormley:
And it becomes somebody else's raw material. I like that very much.

Analysis of Gormely's Angel of the North

Reproduced with permission from Dr. F David Peat. Dr. David Peat is a distinguished Canadian physicist and author. For more information, visit his website.

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The accountants use their laptop computers to churn out the numbers giving the profits to be made if the look includes a baseball cap . . . if the man could be persuaded to dye his hair . . . or if he could be coaxed into shaving twice a day, instead of only once.

Once the visionary designers have finalized the look, they hire an ad agency to market it. A worldwide blitz is launched. Men with the look are shown with women fawning over them; the man with the look is successful at everything: business, love, sports, gambling. . . .Men/Boys around the world fantasize about the look and soon the designer’s coffers start to overflow. Success!

The Sikh creates his own style through his dastar, or his head-dress. The New York designers are unable to profit from this style. The razor companies are left holding the bag. The Sikh has created his own style. Not even another Sikh can emulate his style—so individual is his look.

The Sikh’s dastar gives him self-confidence and pride. The simplest peasant from the Punjab ties his turban as if he were an Emperor. The dastar is the crown of the Sikh. It brings equality between the millionaire and the pauper.

The Beauty of the Pugree
The most beautiful head-dress for men is the hand-tied pugree or turban. This head-dress, once banned by the Mughal Emperors for the commoner, identifies the Sikh from near and afar. The Sikh cannot hide in the masses! He must stand and be counted. (Click to enlarge the image)

The turban or pugree is made from fine cotton and usually comes in about one meter width. A visit to a pugree shop reveals a multitude of colors. Bright ones for the young at heart! The standard black, maroon, army green, navy blue and steel grey for the mature look! White and saffron for the religious look!

The simpler version of the pugree involves an approximately five meter long piece of cloth. Men, who prefer the fuller look may buy eight meters of cloth, cut it in half and make a four-meter-by-two-meter turban to work with.

The Sikh child begins to learn the art of turban tying around his teens. It may take him several years to master the procedure and develop his own personal style to create a work of art.

The pugree is sometimes starched lightly, especially if it is to be worn again without retying it. Otherwise, one works with the soft, unstarched cloth. The first step is the punee where two people stretch the cloth diagonally. The cloth is then folded, while the pugree is kept stretched along the diagonal. Both people fold (by rolling) with their right hands, keeping the left side stretched. After the folding, turban cloth is gathered.

Before tying the pugree the wearer may wrap a colorful fifty around his head. The front portion of the fifty will be visible on the forehead and adds beauty to the pugree.

The tying of the pugree is not simple if one wants to look attractive. Every Sikh boy has spent hours in front of the mirror perfecting the technique. Many Sikh women also wear beautiful turbans with a distinct style. One end of the pugree is held in the mouth while one gradually wraps the cloth around the head. The angle at which each turn is made, the pinching of the cloth on the forehead, the opening and closing of the folds of the cloth—all add subtle touches which lend each pugree a unique look.

Once the entire cloth is almost used up the last part is tucked in front taking great care to smooth any wrinkles from this last fold. The end that was clenched in the teeth is now released and pulled to the back of the head. The first fold is now pulled through and opened so that the entire head can be covered. The back end is now pulled back and tucked in.

Tying of the turban is a physical ritual for the Sikh man and for the woman who chooses to wear a turban. It is a ballet, with precise movements of the hands, shoulders and fingers. The cloth is the medium of this art. Once perfected, it only takes a couple of minutes to tie the turban. But it transforms the way the Sikh looks!

The Less formal Style
The Sikh dastar does not always have to be the long turban. Depending upon the situation, Sikhs have developed less formal styles as well. A two meter long piece of cloth (often with an interesting pattern) can make an attractive, less formal dastar. (Click to enlarge the image)

The In-formal Style
Sikh sportsmen wear the patka made from a square piece of cloth (about two feet by two feet) with strings attached on two sides. The patka is tied around the head with the jurha snugly wrapped in the patka’s strings. Often a bandanna can be tied around the head with no strings. (Click to enlarge the image)

Every religion and culture has its own style of leading one from birth to death. The Sikh style was bestowed by the ten Gurus. Many Sikhs have lived the Sikh style—often at great personal risk—and have influenced the Sikh style.

Dr. Jasprit Singh is a professor of Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and has written five books, the latest entitled ‘Quantum Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications to Technology’. He also authored a book in Punjabi language entitled 'Style of the Lion: The Sikhs'.

The picture on the front page is of Sardar Bhupinder Singh. All other pictures are taken from Dr Jasprit Singh's book 'Style of the Lion: The Sikh'.

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