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flyingfish1 · 7 years

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‘As close as two things can get to being the same one, and what's the first thing they do to each other? Fight.’

Has anybody analyzed the Bible story that Flint quotes in 4x01—the story of the twins Jacob and Esau—in light of Flint and Silver’s relationship this season? I’m asking because I’m about to try to do it :D but I’m not remotely an expert in this area, so it’d be interesting to hear from someone who actually does know what they’re talking about, heh. Especially when it comes to the broader context of the story… because you never know when that’ll be relevant to the story of Black Sails. It’s like when Thomas compares himself and James to Adam and Eve: he only quotes the part of the story in which Adam and Eve are brought together. He doesn’t quote the part of the story in which they are expelled from the Garden of Eden. And yet, both parts of the story become equally applicable to himself and James, as they are exiled from their idyllic life together and thrust into a much harsher world. [There’s an excellent meta about that HERE.]

So yeah. Jacob and Esau.

Just to refresh everybody’s memory, this is what Flint says:

“And the Lord said unto Rebecca, ‘Two nations are in thy womb. Two peoples within you who shall be divided. One shall be stronger than the other. And the older shall serve the younger.’ Twins. As close as two things can get to being the same one, and what's the first thing they do to each other? Fight. Over who gets to be the first one to see the light of day.”

That’s only the beginning of the story, though. I’m sure I’m missing some nuance but, from what I can tell, the rest of the story goes like this:

Jacob and Esau are twin brothers who fight even within the womb, foreshadowing their fighting later in life. Esau is born first and Jacob is born gripping onto Esau’s heel, possibly because he is trying to hold him back so that he himself can be born first. (Also, Esau is given the name ‘Edom,’ meaning ‘red,’ which kind of delights me considering our carrot captain but anyway. Continuing on…) Esau is a hunter and Jacob is a quiet man. Jacob arranges for Esau to sell him his birthright as the firstborn—referring specifically to his inheritance and his duties as the head of the household, I believe—in exchange for a meal. Esau doesn’t care about or want his birthright so he willingly accepts the exchange. Jacob therefore accepts Esau’s role.

Later, Jacob tricks his father into blessing him instead of blessing Esau. Esau does want his father’s blessing, but Jacob has sneakily supplanted his brother once again, much to Esau’s bitterness. Esau resolves to kill Jacob. Their mother Rebecca urges Jacob to flee until his brother’s rage has abated, so Jacob leaves and settles elsewhere. Eventually he marries, has children and becomes prosperous.

Later, Jacob prepares to meet with Esau, and he is frightened to hear that Esau is bringing four hundred men with him. Jacob assumes that Esau is planning to attack him, so he makes preparations, including sending some servants ahead with gifts for Esau. When they meet, he bows down before Esau.

Esau forgives him and the brothers embrace and reconcile before they once again go their separate ways.

We can definitely see some echoes of this story in Flint and Silver’s relationship this season, I think. The two of them are shown to be so similar that they are almost like twins in some ways and, at first, they are partners with a very close relationship, almost like brothers. Flint, the older and more established of the two, willingly cedes to Silver his position as the leader and figurehead of the revolution, and Silver takes up his mantle. But then they fight, and Silver goes behind Flint’s back to steal the cache and hand it over to Rogers, apparently preventing Flint from having the one thing he desires the most: the war. A horrified Flint promptly goes behind Silver’s back to steal the cache right back again, preventing Silver from having the one thing he desires the most: a guarantee of Madi’s safety. So we can see already that the roles of “Jacob” and “Esau” aren’t completely set in stone, even if a lot of the time it seems like Flint=Esau and Silver=Jacob. None of this is an exact 1:1 parallel, though. Flint and Silver both deceive and betray each other. Flint and Silver are both hunters like Esau, and they have also both tricked each other like Jacob did. They’re both equally capable of anything.

And of course it’s Silver who resolves to have Flint killed, while Flint is the one who flees from him.

Although, again, with the roles switching around the way they have been, it’s possible that Flint will turn around and try to kill Silver. Or he might step into the role of Esau again and try to wage war against Silver (erm, somehow. Okay, maybe not. I’m not sure how he’d manage that. But then again, this is Flint we’re talking about—if anybody can go from having only one (1) person who’s working with them, to raising an entire army, it’s Flint :p )

But leaving the specifics aside for the moment--in short, there have been betrayals and there have been death threats and yeah, they’re pretty much at war with each other right now.

Whether or not Flint and Silver will reconcile remains to be seen. (There are those couple of promo photos that make it seem like they might, but it’s hard to tell anything for certain from promos, so I don’t want to jump to conclusions. I’ve got my fingers crossed!) If the story of Silver and Flint is going to mirror the story of Jacob and Esau from beginning to end, then a reconciliation seems almost necessary, even if it happens right before the two of them part ways. But there’s no real way to know for sure which elements of the story will be included and which ones will be left out.

Silver does, however, have in his possession one very significant “gift” that he could give to Flint: Thomas. More specifically, information about Thomas possibly being alive, and information about the location in Spanish Florida where he’s possibly being held. If Silver were to give him that “gift,” it would necessarily change things for everyone. Flint, like Esau, would be in a position to abandon his fight--not only his fight with Silver but his war against the world as well.

We’ll just have to wait and see how much of the rest of this story gets incorporated into the story of Black Sails.

#Black Sails #Black Sails meta #silverflint #sort of #James Flint #John Silver #now everybody come tell me how much I misinterpreted everything!!#my meta #Black Sails spec #bs 4x08 #bs 4x07

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micaramel · 4 years

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Artist: Jonathan Berger

In Collaboration With: Mady Schutzman, Emily Anderson, Tina Beebe, Julian Bittiner, Matthew Brannon, Barbara Fahs Charles, Brother Arnold Hadd, Erica Heilman, Esther Kaplan, Margaret Morton, Richard Ogust, Maria A. Prado, Robert Staples, Michael Stipe, Mark Utter, Michael Wiener, Sara Workneh

Venue: Participant Inc., New York

Exhibition Title: An Introduction to Nameless Love

Date: February 23, 2020 – October 11, 2020

Curated By: Lia Gangitano, Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson

Organized By: Participant Inc., New York and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Participant Inc., New York. Photos by Mark Waldhauser and Carter Seddon.

Press Release:

An Introduction to Nameless Love will reopen to the public from September 9 – October 11, 2020.

From February 23 – April 5, 2020, PARTICIPANT INC is pleased to present Jonathan Berger, An Introduction to Nameless Love, co-commissioned and co-organized with the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. Taking the form of a large-scale sculptural installation that includes over 533,000 tin, nickel, and charcoal parts, Berger’s exhibition chronicles a series of remarkable relationships, creating a platform for complex stories about love to be told. The exhibition draws from Berger’s expansive practice, which comprises a spectrum of activity — brought together here for the first time — including experimental approaches to non-fiction, sculpture and installation, oral history and biography-based narratives, and exhibition-making practices.

Inspired by a close friendship with fellow artist Ellen Cantor (1961-2013), An Introduction to Nameless Love charts a series of six extraordinary relationships, each built on a connection that lies outside the bounds of conventional romance. The exhibition is an examination of the profound intensity and depth of meaning most often associated with “true love,” but found instead through bonds based in work, friendship, religion, service, mentorship, community, and family — as well as between people and themselves, places, objects, and animals. Even as they are persistently unacknowledged by contemporary society at large, these instances of what Berger puts forth as “nameless love” nonetheless enable people to live wholly fulfilling lives steeped in tenderness, ardor, empathy, care, vulnerability, salvation, redemption, and pleasure.*

Over the past five years, Berger has conducted a series of dialogues with diverse subjects about these types of relationships. Drawing on conversations and correspondences, the ongoing outcome of this process is a series of autonomous texts, each of which is generated collaboratively between Berger, the subject(s), and a guest editor of specific significance to each story. In this regard, every text becomes its own idiosyncratic, collectively produced work with Berger and the invited editor (none of whom are editors by profession) in some way supporting the subject’s authorship of their own narrative. The relationships in An Introduction to Nameless Love are embodied by these hybrid texts, which incorporate song lyrics, testimonials, poetry, and scripts as well as excerpts from books, transcribed conversations and interviews, email and letter correspondence, historical documents, reportage, and journal entries.

The exhibition presents a selection of these stories in the form of six differently configured and elaborately constructed large-scale text-based sculptures, evoking historical and cultural forms ranging from illuminated manuscripts to narrative tapestries and vernacular typography. Comprised of some 33,000 one-inch tin letters, meticulously fashioned by Berger and a team of associates, each letter was soldered by hand to nickel wire and affixed in various configurations ranging from scaffold-like panels to spheres, ribbons, diagonal planes, architectural dividers, and topographical surfaces. Imbued with a reverence for their subject, evidenced in the detail, effort, and labor of the human hand, the sculptures create unique embodiments of the stories they tell. Like the narratives they are based on, each sculpture is distinct; and when taken as a whole, the custom-designed font in which all are type set, the exclusive use of tin and nickel material, and Berger’s transformation of the floor into a setting of over 500,000 charcoal cubes serve to unify the texts’ eclectic contents. Through this lens, the exhibition can also be considered as a total work, much like a book with seemingly disparate chapters.

The figures chronicled in this presentation of An Introduction to Nameless Love are designers Charles and Ray Eames, turtle conservationist Richard Ogust, Shaker Brother Arnold Hadd, Autistic writer/philosopher Mark Utter with his communication supporter and collaborator Emily Anderson, and Maria A. Prado, former resident of the New York City underground homeless community known as The Tunnel. Concurrent to Berger’s exhibition, Mady Schutzman published Behold the Elusive Night Parrot, a separate yet parallel work, both of which were informed by a two-year correspondence with each other. Schutzman’s book occupies its own section of the installation.

An Introduction to Nameless Love is an ongoing endeavor, which will continue to evolve alongside Berger’s consistent practice of working to chronicle love in the lives of others. Future iterations will present new text sculptures and different stories that change the exhibition’s form, content, and considerations of what love can be, where it can be found, who and what can possess it, and its potential to shape experience.

Lighting for An Introduction To Nameless Love is designed by the artist Glen Fogel.

Jonathan Berger (b. 1980, New York) lives and works in New York City. Over the past fifteen years, his practice has encompassed a spectrum of activity, pursuing a rigorous investigation of the many ways in which the exhibition site can be repurposed. He maintains an interest in abstract and experimental forms of non- fiction, including embodied biography and portraiture, as rendered through the creation of large-scale, narrative-based exhibitions made from both constructed and found objects. He has presented solo installation projects at the Busan Biennial, South Korea; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Maccarone, Karma, and Grimm-Rosenfeld Gallery, New York; Frieze Projects, London; Adams and Ollman, Portland; and VEDA, Florence. His collaborative and curatorial projects have been presented at venues including MOCA, Los Angeles; The Hebbel Theater, Berlin; and The Queens Museum of Art, Participant Inc, and Performance Space 122, New York, among others. From 2013–2016, Berger served as Director of 80WSE Gallery at NYU, where he mounted a wide range of major exhibitions and collaborative projects presenting the work of Ellen Cantor, Bob Mizer, Printed Matter, James Son Ford Thomas, Michael Stipe, Vaginal Davis, Susanne Sachsse, and xiu xiu, among others. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions at New York University.

Jonathan Berger, An Introduction to Nameless Love is co-organized by PARTICIPANT INC, New York and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University and is curated by Lia Gangitano, Founder/Director, PARTICIPANT INC and Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center. It is presented in its entirety across a two-part exhibition, on view at The Carpenter Center (October 16–December 29, 2019), and at Participant Inc (February 23–April 5, 2020).

* The term “nameless love” was used by Allen Ginsberg in a 1974 Gay Sunshine Interview with Allen Young (Grey Fox Press).

Link: Jonathan Berger at Participant Inc.

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2Wwk8xL

#micaramel

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