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One might not immediately recognize the political relevance of Leonardo da Vinci for the century of climate change, accelerated technology, and various forms of social disruption. However, he saw our situation today pretty clearly in advance and designed his works in accordance with exactly the most crippling dilemmas we face. You might think of this as information engineering on a historical timeline, or just imaginative foresight, or luck. Either way, he provided solutions we very much need to look at, but he had to camouflage them a little due to censorship so as yet we still do not see them aright. What is not in question is that on 31 July 2024 the Speaker of the US House of Representatives declared that his religion was being attacked by a carnivalesque TV entertainment which improperly, in his opinion, associated a painting by Leonardo da Vinci -- the Last Supper -- with nonbinary gender identity and the ancient Greek deity of wine, festivity, and theatre. Whether the creator of the entertainment did or did not intentionally reference the Leonardo painting may never be known, but we do know what the Speaker spoke. Without doubt a high percentage of the planet's population today, despite being acquainted with several images created by Leonardo and their names, severely misunderstands their author and his works of art and science. Therefore it makes sense that award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns chose this misunderstood and often misappropriated figure as his first non-US biographical subject for his next film, due out in November. Leonardo relates to American history, because he relates to all history -- especially modern history -- according to the press release, and relates to American political history because he relates to art, science, and all forms of freedom. (See link below.) For my own part, to assist in some small way this process of new and renewed understanding, I have created some t-shirts that say "Je m'appelle Esperienza. -- La Joconde" and was going to try to wear one to the Louvre during the Olympics but couldn't get it scheduled. Therefore if anyone is in Paris or knows someone who will be during the games I'll be happy to express ship a shirt or shirts free. They are dark blue with white lettering, 100% cotton, S/M/L/XL. No documentation or photos are required, the ask is just to wear the shirt to the Louvre, but if anything interesting happens I'd be happy to see or hear about it. I can send a photo of the shirt on request. T-shirts aside it's hard to imagine a more illustrative case for the need for t-shirts when far-right propaganda outlets are using a demagogic defense of Leonardo as a vehicle for their politics of hate, fear, division, kleptocracy, and regress. They couldn't be more distant from or contrary to the ideals Leonardo stood for and worked his whole life to help us see even five centuries later. Seeing this better, and understanding it, may be the key fever-break we need to achieve a more well and sustainable early Anthropocene century. The starting point is to address the famous untitled portrait as Experience, and go from there. https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/leonardo-da-vinci-a-new-film-from-ken-burns-to-air-on-pbs-november-18-and-19-2024/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVnVvQE7NmU (Ken Burns interview with Walter Isaacson) +++ (feel free to forward) _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
