12/20/2023 0 Comments Dj kap cosmic dancer![]() ![]() I think it’s particularly important to include as much of the Islamic world view – Hindu, Buddhist, Jain – as possible. But I do think it’s hugely important to be as inclusive as possible, to include artists from a wide variety of cultures, and certainly not to be Eurocentric. Obviously, I don’t have expert knowledge in every culture and every era, so my image choices tended to be what immediately appealed to me visually. SE: It was a challenge to be as representative as possible and to include images from as many different cultures and as many eras as possible. JL: Did you encounter any unexpected challenges in putting together the book? Were there any conflicts with artists whose work you wanted to include, for example? A few of the volvelles are missing the pearls that are used as weights at the end of the strings but they all still work. They are enormous, incredibly intricate yet incredibly sturdy things. The chief librarian at Magdalen College, Oxford, showed me some volvelles in their collection. I’m proud to say I’ve played with one of the volvelles featured in the book – the one with the dragon on it. Some of the images I first encountered in a museum or gallery, of course. With these it’s very difficult to search for things unless you have some knowledge of the language. The one hindrance I have is with institutions and museums, particularly Japanese and Chinese museums, where there’s a language barrier. The skilful deployment of key words in search engines is essential. Sites, such as the internet archive and – the ultimate aim of which is to catalogue and scan every single book in existence – have been very helpful. And because I’ve spent so long doing this and been so obsessive about it, I do know where to look for things and can locate some of the more obscure places. The way I store things is completely chaotic and haphazard but it makes sense to me. I’ve built up a repository of useful links and resources in my own internal map. ![]() SE: I spend far too much time going down various rabbit holes throughout the internet. Where did you find them all? How do you go about researching them or how do you come across them? ![]() JL: There’s a huge diversity of amazing and surprising images in the book. I hope these pairings are pleasing and charming and delight the intellect and the eye. At the same time, some of the correspondence and visual pairings are quite obvious, for example the unicorn in captivity and the golden bird from the Ripley Scroll. Even familiar images can take on new meaning if presented alongside something surprising. In The Cosmic Dance, many images are juxtaposed in surprising ways, so that they reflect upon one another. Nowadays I tend to think visually rather than verbally and I think that the simple juxtaposition of two images can express an idea that it might take thousands of words to convey. Finding connections and correspondences between images, between cultures, between ideas and beliefs – that’s what I’ve most enjoyed about what I’ve been doing on social media for a decade or more. I want to present the multiplicity of everything – the extraordinary richness and strangeness of everything – as individual parts of a whole rather than disparate and discrete elements. Visual representations of traditional ideas have often been used to reinforce hierarchies but I’ve attempted to subvert that purpose, to create something that is non-hierarchical. Stephen Ellcock: It’s an attempt to provide a unified vision of creation through a journey from the microcosm to the macrocosm – a visual journey from the smallest units of existence to the vastness of infinite space, the cosmos. Jane Laing: In your own words, how would you describe the overall concept of The Cosmic Dance ? ![]()
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