It's finally here
It's finally here
The print version of Mercurius’s iconic Surreal-Absurd series is now available!
An anthology like no other.
Meditations: The Dark Rose
The wind the sun the hum
The drip the drop the distraction
The fifth element(s): Time, space and consciousness
The fifth element is the most mysterious of all the elements. It is the missing link that crowns and completes our earthly knowledge.
Meditations: Air
As the borough and bankside start to receive an influx of 200 skyscrapers, the trees are dwarfed. Can they survive?
The thin place
In Gaelic, the “thin place” translates as “closest place to heaven on Earth”. The cloud appears to touch the water. As you gaze on the iron clad surface, the peaty mud between your toes, a deafening silence surrounds your ears.
Air: the double magic of words
Words themselves are empty: hollow draughts of spit encasing air. In Tarot cards, the element of air is defined by swords that cut both ways. Words foster clarity or wreak havoc and self-harm. We should be careful how we use them.
La gaviota (the seagull)
La gaviota (the seagull) by Ariadna. Presented to the public for the first time by Mercurius Magazine.
Being a body
Ser un cuerpo (Being a body), C-print on paper, 60 x 65 cm, 2020. Victor Manzanal.
Riding the first wave: Lockdown in Paris
Lockdown can feel like prison. No long walks, nor catching up with friends. Everyone you know is scattered across the city, out of physical reach. Policemen patrol the streets. You sit alone in your room, grim and anxious, perhaps even depressed.
Fire
As the yearly heat begins again, the city comes to life. With lockdown eased, the roads pulsate with cars, and the terraces of bars are brimming with drinkers and diners. Those eerie days of March, of emptiness and birdsong-haunted avenues, have started to recede. Perhaps all this will be a memory soon. How much normality will be restored, if any?
Meditations: Fire
Given that everyone can now make very passable images with their handsets, to reach another level it is a matter of nuance: how to trick the machine to show the perceived but otherwise unseen.
What the living do
I discovered Marie Howe through her book "What the Living Do" published in Caracas. A book that follows the threads of the illness and death of a loved one (her brother) and subtly connects us to the birth and transparency of all shadows.
Mercuries #1: Sculptural poetry
I'm interested in three dimensions and poetry, and what we might term sculptural poetry. Why is language two-dimensional when it is objective material? Why does this bleed into what we take the social engagement of reading, and speaking, to be? The head, the mouth, the tongue, the ears: objects in the world.
Earth
The month of May belongs to Aphrodite, the mother goddess, famed for love and beauty. This year the city seems to bless her more than other years. The shops, silent behind their steel shutters, announce a different kind of place: all sense of being in a hurry gone; nothing to buy, just days to live, without the noise and fuss of all those small invented worlds, the markets, schools, and mausoleums, competing for space with Mother Earth.
If this is the stuff dreams are made of
If this is the stuff dreams are made of, acrylic and oil on linen, 116 x 89cm, 2015. Jose Castiella.
Water
In Barcelona, they say the spring begins when orange blossom fills the cloisters of the old monastery, just off Calle Hospital, in the old town neighbourhood of El Raval. This year, no such initiation. The gates are locked, the library closed. Only birds frequent that fragrant desolation.
The never-ending quest…
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