Category: Culture

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Fragments in Conversation: Imagining Twombly and Guston in Rome

In a quiet courtyard of the Capitoline Museum in Rome, the colossal hand of Constantine rests on its plinth, a fragment of imperial ambition and human scale. Here, Guston and Twombly meet, observing and responding to the same ruin through their very different artistic sensibilities; the hypothetical encounter becomes a meditation on gesture, history, and the ethical weight of mark-making, allowing the past to speak while their own practices converse across time.

The afternoon sun warmed the stones of the Capitoline Museum’s courtyard, its light striking the marble façades with a soft, diffuse glow. The colossal right hand of Constantine rested on a low plinth, isolated from other objects, a fragment of a once-magnificent imperial statue. Its scale was imposing even as a fragment, and the careful carving of the fingers and veins conveyed both power and a subtle human vulnerability.

A collage that I created from a photograph of Twombly (perhaps taken by Robert Rauschenberg) and Philip Guston at the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

The colossal right hand of Constantine, displayed on a plinth in the Capitoline courtyard, is a surviving fragment of a seated statue created between 313 and 324 AD for the Basilica of Maxentius. Originally part of an acrolithic composition, the emperor’s head and exposed body were carved from Parian marble, while the draped cloak was rendered in gilded bronze foil; this suggested both divine authority and imperial grandeur. The statue, which once rose approximately 10 metres, assimilated Constantine to Jupiter, portraying him as a god on earth; the raised index finger, now partially restored, likely held a sceptre, reinforcing the gesture’s symbolic assertion of power.

Today, the hand conveys a mixture of monumental force and fragile humanity. The work’s fragmentary state, seen alongside other preserved sections of the colossal statue, including the head and central arm, reveals the sculpture as a ruin that still communicates its historical and political ambition. As isolated fragments, these remnants encourage reflection on the passage of time; the vulnerability of even the most imposing symbols; and the ethical and aesthetic weight of human representation, themes that resonate profoundly with both Guston’s and Twombly’s concerns in painting.

τῷ σωτηριώδει σημείῳ, τῷ ἀληθεῖ ἐλέγχῳ τῆς ἀνδρείας τὴν πόλιν ὑμῶν ἀπὸ ζυγοῦ τοῦ τυράννου διασωθεῖσαν ἠλευθέρωσα, ἔτι μὴν καὶ τὴν σύγκλητον καὶ τὸν δῆμον Ῥωμαίων τῇ ἀρχαίᾳ ἐπιφανείᾳ καὶ λαμπρότητι ἐλευθερώσας ἀποκατέστησα. -- Eusebius 

Under this singular sign (singularius signum), which is the mark (insigne) of true excellence, I restored (restituo) the city of Rome, the senate, and the Roman people, torn away by the yoke (iugo) of tyrannical rule (tyrannicus dominatio), to their former freedom (libertas) and nobility (nobilitas). -- tr. Rufinus

Guston leaned against a nearby column, sketchbook resting loosely in his hands, eyes fixed on the hand with an intensity that seemed to challenge the world to respond. “Even as a fragment,” he said, tapping his fingers against the page, “this hand carries a grotesque weight. It’s absurd, monumental, human. Every mark here insists on being read as a statement of power and presence. It reminds me of the hooded figures or the shoes in my later paintings: blunt witnesses to human absurdity and moral consequence.”

Guston shifted slightly, letting the weight of the fragment press on him as he traced an invisible line from the marble back to his sketchbook. “Even fractured, it asserts authority; even incomplete, it demands a response. The hand is absurdly large, but it is human; its veins, its fingers, its tension—all of it insists that someone, somewhere, bore responsibility for the act. There is a moral weight in these gestures, whether carved in stone or brushed on canvas.”

Twombly stood a few paces away, tilting his head sideways as he traced the subtle fractures in the marble. “I understand,” he said, voice calm, almost lyrical, “but for me the incompleteness is essential. The gesture does not exist merely to confront; it exists to be felt, to be remembered. The cracks, the missing pieces, the space around it—all of that creates a dialogue between past and present. My marks are like that; they do not dominate the surface; they listen to what is already there, extending the story rather than imposing it. Even in ruin, the hand speaks, but it allows us to speak back.” His words echoed the improvisatory gestures and calligraphic lines of Fifty Days at Iliam, where each mark floated between presence and absence, between history and recollection.

Guston drew a blunt, quick line across his sketchbook, a gesture almost corporeal in its insistence. “I grant you that,” he said, “but there is an ethics in confrontation as well. The past presses on us, and the fragments of history demand recognition; silence or mediation is not always sufficient. When I paint, I confront moral and historical weight directly. This hand, monumental though incomplete, insists that someone accounted for every gesture, every line, every mark. There is responsibility in scale and in execution; the fragment reminds us that grandeur is inseparable from human intention and consequence.”

Twombly’s gaze lingered, following the curvature of the knuckles and the subtle slope of the wrist. “And yet there is also an ethics of receptivity,” he said. “Not every gesture must dominate; some exist to be extended or echoed. In its incompleteness, the hand allows us to inhabit the space it leaves, to feel the gestures that preceded us. The hand already exists. Our gestures extend it, converse with it, but do not dominate it. In its incompleteness, it teaches humility. Every mark we make can be a response rather than a statement. Painting is similar; we mark, we trace, we respond, but we do not always impose. The ruins speak to us precisely because they permit reflection as well as recognition.”

For a long moment, the courtyard fell into silence, the distant shuffle of tourists paling against the quiet gravity of the fragment. Guston’s gaze remained intense and corporeal, measuring the hand as if willing it to yield its secrets, while Twombly’s eyes drifted over the fractures, absorbing the residue of centuries. The colossal hand became a mediator between them, embodying the convergence of human ambition, ethical responsibility, and historical fragility. In that shared attention, both understood the stakes of gesture and mark; one through confrontation, the other through evocation, and both through fidelity to what remains.

Finally, Guston nodded toward the fragment. “They wanted to make power eternal,” he said, “but what survives is fragmentary, grotesque, human. That is the lesson for us: every action, every word, every figure, every mark carries weight.” Twombly turned back, eyes following the line of the fingers. “And in that fragment, in the silence between gestures, I feel history breathing. Painting is its echo—not the hand itself, but the trace it leaves, its shadow.”

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Ritual, Myth, and Mediation: Dharmoo and Strauss at the NAC

The National Arts Centre’s pairing of Gabriel Dharmoo’s Wanmansho with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben stages a compelling conversation across time about how music constructs identity and narrative. In Wanmansho, Dharmoo transforms the orchestra into a site of ritual and mythmaking, performing as both composer and soloist through voice, breathwork, gesture, and silence. The work invents a fully imagined cultural ceremony, blending satire, myth, and expressive theatricality. It interrogates the mediation of culture itself, foregrounding how performance and media shape perception and engagement, turning the audience into active participants in a constructed reality.

Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, by contrast, deploys orchestral scale and rhetoric to monumentalize the heroic self. The NAC Orchestra captures every nuance of Strauss’s narrative, from the intimate lyricism of the companion episode to the overwhelming force of battle and triumph. Where Strauss asserts identity through epic musical spectacle, Dharmoo experiments with multiplicity, hybridity, and performative mediation. Together, these works illuminate how orchestral media can construct, challenge, and transform notions of culture, heroism, and presence, revealing music as both narrative and immersive, a space where identity is performed, mediated, and refracted across generations.

The program was made all the more memorable under the direction of conductor Alexander Shelley, whose time as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra comes to an end this season. Shelley brought clarity and energy to both works, balancing the bold theatricality of Dharmoo’s Wanmansho with the sweeping grandeur of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. His final performances with the NAC Orchestra make this concert a powerful close to his leadership, leaving a lasting legacy of innovation and artistry.

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Where Landscape Dances: An Afternoon with Les Scénographies‑Paysages

Attending Danièle Desnoyers’s Les Scénographies-Paysages yesterday at the Mackenzie King Estate on a clear autumn afternoon was like stepping into a dialogue between movement, memory, and place. The red and golden hues of the trees seemed almost choreographed; it was as though the season had joined Desnoyers’s company in performance. What was striking about this work was how it resisted the conventional frame of the stage. The dancers’ movements did not merely unfold against a backdrop of ruins, gardens, and forest trails; they seemed to emerge from them, as if the estate itself were teaching the body how to move.

Danièle Desnoyers has long been interested in how choreography can be porous to its environment according to her biography; at the Mackenzie King Estate this openness finds a particularly rich counterpart. The site itself is a paradox: a cultivated wilderness, curated ruins, and gardens intended to feel both timeless and fragile. William Lyon Mackenzie King’s decision to import fragments of European stonework and arrange them as “ruins” in the Gatineau forest was an attempt to graft layers of history onto Canadian soil; it was as if to accelerate the presence of a past that otherwise was not there. These Romantic follies are at once artificial and poignant; they express both personal vision and a longing for timelessness. Desnoyers’s choreography responds to this temporal play, adding yet another “ruin,” although one made of moving bodies and fleeting gestures. Dance becomes an ephemeral architecture built within and against these fabricated stones.

The performance’s wandering form transforms the audience into fellow-travellers. Unlike a stage that fixes the audience in a frontal relation, here you follow the dancers through shifting landscapes. Attending with friends underscored this collectivity. You witnessed not only the dancers but also one another, framed by trees and ruins, in the act of being present together. The nearness of bodies; performers and public alike; generates the “points of curiosity” Desnoyers describes, moments where the boundary between art and daily life thins. A shaft of light, the rustle of leaves, the sound of water; these details become part of the choreography, revealing how nature composes alongside the dancers.

What lingers after such an afternoon is not a single image or sequence but an impression of layered time. I saw the forest as both immediate and historical, natural and curated. I felt the ruins as both false and strangely resonant. Through the dance, I experienced how the ephemeral; steps, gestures, breath; can temporarily inscribe itself into this landscape of stone and tree. The joy of simply being outdoors on a beautiful fall day became part of the work’s poetic resonance. In this way, Les Scénographies-Paysages reminds us that choreography is not confined to the studio or the theatre but can exist wherever bodies, histories, and landscapes intersect. It does not impose spectacle but gently reveals how movement; human, seasonal, architectural, vegetal; can be understood as a shared composition.

Pizza and wonderful conversation at Roberto Pizza Romano in Chelsea after the show was the perfect ending!

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Seeing, Hearing, Speaking: From Buddhist Ethics to Moral Blindness in Contemporary Media

The three wise monkeys—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil—have travelled from 17th-century Japanese shrines to contemporary streaming television. This post traces their journey, exploring how a moral maxim rooted in Buddhist ethics has become a symbol of complicity, selective perception, and critique of power in shows like Alien: Earth, The White Lotus, and Only Murders in the Building.

The motif of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is one of the most recognizable symbolic triads in global visual culture. Its origins are usually traced to early modern Japan, where in 1617 the sculptor Hidari Jingorō carved the three wise monkeys at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō. The phrase in Japanese—mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru—literally means “do not see, do not hear, do not speak.” The pun arises because the suffix -zaru indicates negation while saru also means monkey. The monkeys therefore embody the maxim in a visual and linguistic fusion. The religious background is both Buddhist and Confucian. In Indian sources that travelled along Buddhist transmission routes, there are injunctions to avoid corrupting the senses by guarding sight, hearing, and speech. These were absorbed into Chinese and then Japanese traditions where self-regulation of perception and conduct became moral instruction. The monkeys therefore originally symbolised virtue, discipline, and the refusal to indulge in evil by policing the senses.

At Nikkō Tōshōgū, a UNESCO World Heritage site dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, a famed carving of three monkeys adorns the stable for sacred horses. Known in Japanese as “sanzaru” and in English as the “three wise monkeys,” it remains the shrine’s most celebrated image.

Once the motif left its shrine context, its meaning began to migrate and transform. When European travellers encountered the monkeys and reproduced them in prints and decorative arts, they became part of the broader art movement of Japonisme, which captivated Western artists and collectors in the mid-19th century with Japanese aesthetics and symbolism. The monkeys, admired for their compositional clarity and triadic structure, were often reinterpreted to suit European tastes; in Victorian England and later in North America, to “see no evil” no longer signified virtuous self-restraint but deliberate blindness. The phrase became a critique of those who ignored corruption, injustice, or cruelty by pretending not to notice. Detached from their Buddhist ethical origins, the monkeys were recast as symbols of hypocrisy, complicity, and self-preservation—a critical lens on human evasions that persists today.

In contemporary streaming media, the three monkeys have shed any quaint or exotic connotation to become a living, adaptive symbol of denial and selective perception. Science fiction, satire, and crime comedy all engage the motif because these genres are preoccupied with what is seen, heard, and spoken, and with the consequences of turning away. The monkeys now function as a lens through which audiences can examine not only character behaviour but also the structural mechanics of power, privilege, and moral evasion that shape modern narrative worlds.

In Alien: Earth, the narrative stages a civilization dominated by corporate elites whose decisions exert life-or-death consequences with near-total impunity. The refusal to see, hear, or speak operates as a cultivated strategy of wilful ignorance; executives and powerful actors turn away from the human costs of their ambition, masking exploitation and ethical transgression behind layers of procedure and profit. The three monkeys emerge as an ironic emblem of this structural blindness, highlighting how moral abdication is embedded in systems of power. Knowledge and warning exist, yet they are ignored, deferred, or commodified, producing a world in which suffering is visible but systematically unacknowledged. By invoking this ancient motif, the series critiques not only individual denial but also the political and technological mechanisms that enable it, offering a cynical meditation on complicity, control, and the ethics of corporate governance.

The three monkeys on the wall of Slightly’s Room.

In The White Lotus, the satirical lens exposes how privilege enforces selective perception as a form of social power. The wealthy guests and resort operators deliberately ignore the labour, inequality, and suffering that sustain their comfort; to “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” becomes a strategy of moral insulation. The three monkeys here serve as an ironic emblem of systemic blindness, illustrating how performative innocence masks structural exploitation. What began as a religious maxim for ethical self-discipline is transformed into a critique of entitlement and complicity, showing how social and economic hierarchies institutionalize ignorance while allowing moral corruption to proliferate under the guise of civility and leisure.

White Lotus Season Three

Comedy offers yet another transformation of the motif in Only Murders in the Building. The trio of amateur detectives should in principle be the antithesis of the monkeys; their task is to observe, listen, and speak. Yet their eccentricity and missteps mean that they often fail to see what is in plain sight, to hear crucial truths, or to articulate findings coherently. The irony lies in the fact that the very structure of the series invites viewers to identify with these failures, to enjoy complicity in the gaps between evidence and interpretation. The comic inflection therefore reveals how the motif can be mobilised not only as critique of blindness but also as a mirror of the audience’s own desire for mediated narratives of crime and justice.

Only Murders in the Building, Season Five.

Taken together, these examples demonstrate that the three monkeys remain a powerful semiotic device, capable of registering complicity, denial, and ethical abdication across cultures and media. In Japan they disciplined perception; in the West they became shorthand for deliberate blindness and hypocrisy; in contemporary streaming television they expose the mechanics of privilege, power, and selective attention, showing how systems of wealth, authority, and narrative control facilitate moral evasion. The migration of the motif illustrates how a Buddhist ethical maxim has been transformed into a critical instrument, tracing the enduring intersections of ignorance, responsibility, and spectacle in human society. Perhaps its most urgent lesson today is a return to its original purpose: guarding our senses against the constant onslaught of information, opinion, and moral distraction in the age of social media.

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The Aesthetics of Technological Otherness: Hybrid Bodies, Horror, and Fear in Alien: Earth

I have been really enjoying Alien: Earth so far; the series blends suspense, striking visuals, and complex ethical dilemmas in ways that are both intriguing and thought-provoking, like the original movie and its sequels-some more than others. It situates horror at the intersection of technological, corporeal, and ecological systems. Fear arises not simply from alien lifeforms but from the networks that generate and contain them: corporate infrastructures, technological apparatuses, and ethical contingencies. The series presents alienness as simultaneously aesthetic, perceptual, and ethical; hybrid bodies, synthetic forms, and immersive environments create a field in which horror, reflection, and perception converge. Wendy, the synthetic-human protagonist, functions as both observer and observed, mediating the apprehension of systemic otherness in ways that are affective, philosophical, and ethical.

The series’ temporal structure transforms suspense into a layered and reflective experience. Horror extends beyond the story itself through multimedia storytelling, combining streaming episodes, podcasts, behind-the-scenes features, and immersive experiences; viewers navigate multiple layers of time simultaneously, moving between the immediate events on screen, anticipated developments, and knowledge of the franchise’s history. Familiarity with canonical moments from the original films intersects with the series’ present narrative, creating a suspended space in which ethical reflection and anticipation converge. Horror arises not only from the presence of alien lifeforms but from our awareness of systemic conditions: corporate ambition, technological experimentation, and ecological vulnerability. The opening sequence of the hibernation pods exemplifies this vividly; its cinematography recalls the original film and its sequels, framing enclosed bodies with high-contrast lighting and deep spatial perspective, linking Alien: Earth to its cinematic predecessors. Fear emerges as viewers recognize the continuity of containment, vulnerability, and technological mediation across decades of franchise design, transforming suspense into both ethical reflection and perceptual engagement.

Hibernation pods: Alien, 1979
Hibernation pods: Alien: Earth 2025

Spatial and visual configurations further mediate this apprehension. Enclosures—spaceships, research stations, and terrestrial landscapes—function as immersive topologies that simultaneously protect and threaten. Within these spaces, uncanny lifeforms such as the eye-octopus and the sheep operate as emblematic vectors of aesthetic and ethical reflection. The eye-octopus, with its multiplicity of eyes, renders vision itself alien; it confronts the human spectator with the limits of embodied understanding and the redistribution of agency. The sheep, serene and unassuming, functions as a locus of ethical contemplation; it makes visible the consequences of technological intervention and foregrounds the fragility of life within systems of control. Screenshots of critical sequences, such as the opening of hibernation pods or close-ups of Wendy navigating alien environments, underscore the deliberate continuity and evolution of franchise aesthetics. These motifs operate less as spectacle than as instruments for the apprehension of relational and systemic conditions; horror is inseparable from ethical reflection and perceptual calibration.

images upon enfolded images

Hybrid corporeality is central to the series’ treatment of otherness. Wendy’s body, like the eye-octopus, unsettles hierarchies of perception and agency; she occupies a liminal zone where human, synthetic, and alien attributes interpenetrate, at once vulnerable and empowered, observer and observed. The sheep, by contrast, anchors human action in an ethical frame, its vulnerability exposing the consequences of technological mediation. Together, these figures exemplify Technological Otherness, where fear and reflection arise from relational structures rather than from isolated monsters. The sheep, like their use in Severance, stand as markers of human experimentation and technological control; whether as literal subjects of manipulation, as in cloning or laboratory testing, or as symbolic witnesses to systemic intervention, they foreground ethical responsibility and the consequences of humans exercising power over life.

Horror in Alien: Earth is inseparable from its temporal, spatial, and corporeal registers. Alien lifeforms, corporate systems, and experimental technologies intersect to produce systemic contingency, while bodies and enclosures function as both protection and exposure. Visual motifs such as the eye-octopus, the sheep, and the hibernation pods crystallize these tensions, linking continuity of aesthetic form with ethical consequence. Horror becomes the recognition of vulnerability, agency, and systemic mediation.

The series thus develops a logic of horror that is perceptual, aesthetic, and ethical. Human, alien, and synthetic forms are mutually constitutive within environments structured by relational networks. Horror is not mere shock; it is the perception of contingency and the embodied awareness of survival within technological and corporate frameworks.

This aesthetic design resonates with art-historical traditions, where spatial construction, light, and corporeal orientation mediate intellectual and ethical reflection. Hybrid figures like the eye-octopus evoke post-humanist questions of embodiment and agency, while the sheep embodies the fragility of life under systemic intervention. Horror emerges from negotiating these registers, where immersion, perception, and ethics converge.

Alien: Earth demonstrates that contemporary horror is inseparable from the conditions that produce it. Narrative, visual, and temporal design collaborate to construct systemic fear, implicating audiences within networks of surveillance, hybridity, and containment. In this sense, the series synthesizes aesthetic spectacle with ethical inquiry and philosophical meditation.

The sheep with the octopus eye embodies uncanny, ethically charged otherness.

Its achievement lies in rendering horror both perceptual and reflective. Temporal distribution, spatialized aesthetics, and hybrid corporeality create an immersive sphere where fear is experienced as systemic and ethical encounter. Figures such as the eye-octopus and the sheep, alongside the hibernation pods echoing the 1979 film and its sequels, make visible the interrelation of agency, vulnerability, and consequence. Horror becomes not only spectacle but also a medium for apprehending how otherness is constituted, observed, and experienced. It compels recognition that fear is shaped by technological infrastructures and corporate power, exposing how otherness is managed, exploited, and contained within systems of control.

I note that there are still two episodes left in this season and I, for one, look forward to this each week although I sometimes wonder why they make such secure facilities but leave man/alien sized crawl spaces available throughout the complex?

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From Flight to Belonging: Refugee Testimony and the Canadian Imagination

Hearts of Freedom: Stories of Southeast Asian Refugees.
Peter Duschinsky, Colleen Lundy, Michael J. Molloy, Allan Moscovitch, and Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe. Foreword by Joe Clark. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025. Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, no. 20.

Northrop Frye observed that Canadian sensibility is less perplexed by “Who am I?” than by “Where is here?” (The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination). Hearts of Freedom resonates with this insight, as the refugees’ narratives reveal not only their own journeys but also who Canadians wanted to be, showing a nation aspiring to generosity, inclusion, and humanitarian engagement.

Hearts of Freedom is both a book and a wider public history initiative dedicated to preserving the voices of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees who arrived in Canada between 1975 and 1997. Drawing on 173 oral history interviews, the final one conducted with former Prime Minister Joe Clark, the editors have created an invaluable archive of lived experience that complements existing institutional accounts of the Indochinese resettlement program. Whereas earlier works such as Michael Molloy and Peter Duschinsky’s Running on Empty (2017) traced the diplomatic and bureaucratic machinery of resettlement, this volume turns deliberately to the refugees themselves; it foregrounds their voices and memories as the central historical evidence.

The book is organized thematically and by national origin, with chapters devoted to the experiences of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees. Early sections recount the violence, persecution, and dislocation that prompted flight—civil war, invasions, genocide, and perilous journeys by land and sea. Many of the interviewees tell their stories of being refugees through temporary camps in Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, before tracing their arrival in Canada. The narratives detail first impressions of climate, language, and cultural difference, alongside encounters with both the generosity of sponsors and the challenges of prejudice. The editors preserve the cadence of testimony, allowing survivors’ voices to remain central, while photographs, maps, and timelines situate these stories in their historical and geographic contexts.

The central contribution of Hearts of Freedom is to the social history of immigration and refugee settlement in Canada. The oral histories reveal not only personal trauma and resilience but also the crucial role of private citizens and community organizations in facilitating integration. Frequent mentions of “church ladies” highlight how ordinary Canadians, particularly women in faith communities, provided everyday care and advocacy that were essential to the refugees’ resettlement and sense of welcome. Readers are reminded of the transformative significance of Canada’s private sponsorship program, recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees with the 1986 Nansen Medal. These accounts reveal the program’s practical challenges and occasional failures; they also show its capacity to foster belonging and to reshape Canadian multiculturalism in the late twentieth century.

The volume’s strength lies in its breadth of testimony and the affective immediacy of the narratives. The stories convey in intimate detail what was at stake for families who risked everything to flee; they also reveal how newcomers encountered both welcome and exclusion in their new country. If there is a limitation, it lies in the difficulty of sustaining analytical coherence across such a wide range of experiences; the oral history format necessarily fragments, and at times readers may wish for more interpretive synthesis. Yet this very openness is also a virtue; it resists the tendency to impose a single, homogenizing narrative on a diverse refugee population.

For historians, Hearts of Freedom is indispensable as both a research source and a teaching text; it exemplifies the methodological rigour and interpretive nuance that oral history can bring to the study of migration. By centring refugee memory, the book extends the historiography of Canadian immigration beyond policy and institution centred narratives; it shows how first‑person testimony captures the lived experience of liminality, displacement, and adaptation, revealing social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of migration that conventional archival sources often overlook. For scholars of migration and liminal studies, the collection offers a model for integrating oral history with broader historical, sociopolitical, and cultural analysis, demonstrating how voices at the margins convey both individual agency and structural forces. For policymakers and community practitioners, it provides hard earned lessons about the critical importance of listening to those most affected by refugee regimes; the book shows how human experiences can shape program design, foster empathetic engagement, and deepen understanding of the complex dynamics of resettlement.

Crucially, Hearts of Freedom also prompts reflection on Canada itself. The resettlement of people from Southeast Asia was never only about those who arrived; it was also about those who received them. The unprecedented scale of private sponsorship, the debates in Parliament, and the work of immigration officials who designed and implemented new programs were matched by the readiness of thousands of Canadians to open their homes. Together, these efforts marked a political moment in which the country tested its aspirations as a humanitarian actor on the world stage. As the book notes, “[i]n Canada, we can live with and celebrate fluid identities” (p. 75). The refugees’ narratives reveal not only their own journeys but also who Canadians wanted to be; they show a nation striving toward generosity, inclusion, and global responsibility. It is this dual legacy; of refugees remaking their lives and of Canadians aspiring to embody their highest ideals; that gives Hearts of Freedom its enduring political and historical resonance.

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The Teeth of Time: Density, Data, and the Devouring Present

This essay reflects on François Hartog’s Chronos: The West Confronts Time and Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume to examine how contemporary experience is structured by the density and intensity of the immediate; it considers how algorithms and data operate as instruments of presentism, shaping perception, attention, and ethical judgment, while also exploring the volumetric, spatial, and political dimensions of time that persist as gaps and openings for reflection, action, and the possibility of the event. In practice, this means that even in a world dominated by algorithmic notifications, taking a moment to focus on one’s breath can disrupt the cycle of immediacy, creating space for reflection and ethical choice. This small act of resistance becomes a political statement in an age of temporal commodification

Time no longer flows linearly but weighs, stretches, and bends. François Hartog’s concept of presentism captures this phenomenon with precision: the present thickens into an all-consuming immediacy, while the past is relegated to archives and the future collapses into anticipation and calculation. The now devours perception, enfolds thought, and dictates the very possibility of cognition. Each breath, pause, or glance becomes saturated with urgency, bending attention toward the immediate and away from slow, reflective human thought.

Data and algorithms amplify this temporal pressure. Data provides the raw substrate, capturing traces of action, movement, and behaviour, while algorithms translate these traces into legible, manipulable units. Dashboards, predictive models, and streams of metrics condense the world into fragments of the now, folding them into recursive feedback loops. Algorithms, in this sense, are the teeth of a temporal monster: they bite into the raw presence of data, structuring and presenting the present as both comprehensible and overwhelming. Immediacy thickens, intensifies, and hollows out slow time, leaving human rhythms—the time of the breath—fragmented and compromised. The phenomenology of data is enacted through algorithmic mediation; it is only through algorithms that data becomes perceptible, shaping attention, memory, and perception itself.

📸 by me
📸 by me

The seduction of this system is both perceptual and political. Predictive algorithms, real-time analytics, and constant monitoring promise mastery, optimization, and control. Yet their scale, complexity, and opacity render such mastery provisional. Governments, corporations, and institutions deploy these tools to regulate behaviour, anticipate risk, and shape populations. The temporal density of the present becomes a political instrument, codifying attention, compressing reflection, and normalizing immediacy. Here, density refers to the accumulation of temporal moments, the layered presence of events, while intensity captures the pressure and urgency that these moments exert on perception and cognition; algorithms manipulate both, structuring the present to maximize immediacy while hollowing out slow, reflective time. Data flows through algorithms, structuring perception while reinforcing power, embedding the devouring present into everyday experience. This is more than capitalism; it is the monetization of time itself, a system where every moment, every breath, every micro-attention is reduced to a measurable increment, stripped of meaning except as a unit to be processed and consumed. Beyond the standing reserve of things, this is a standing reserve of the present, where experience, reflection, and ethical possibility are harvested, quantified, and compressed, leaving only the illusion of control.

To inhabit this mediated present requires rhythm, attention, and awareness lest you get lost in the Heraclitean torrent of the now. Notice the cadence of notifications, alerts, and feeds—the pulse of algorithmic time pressing on thought. Feel the compression of attention into micro-increments, the folding of past traces, projected futures, and quantified nows into each gesture. Presentism is enacted in every swipe, every calculated anticipation. Yet spaces remain for reflection, ethical judgment, and bodily presence. Awareness of the structures governing perception allows one to inhabit the present without surrendering entirely, tracing micro-rhythms and perceiving folds, gaps, and intensities that slip beyond measurement, beyond data, beyond algorithms.

The body measures temporal density through breath, heartbeat, and subtle gestures—rhythms that defy calculation. A pause, a deep inhalation, or a moment of stillness expands the present and slows its intensity. Pranayama, an ancient yogic breathing practice, can be seen not just as a spiritual exercise but as a way to experience time itself—a ‘phenomenology of time’ that reveals its texture and rhythm; it transforms breath into a form of knowledge, where rhythm and pause disclose temporality as irreducible to data and uncapturable by the algorithm. In this sense it resonates with Hannah Arendt’s description of the “gap” between past and future, that interval where thinking becomes possible, and with Christine Ross’s exploration of the temporal event in contemporary art, wherein moments can rupture habitual patterns and open new possibilities for perception and action. By grounding the abstract concept of time in bodily experience, pranayama reveals how lived time—thick, slow, and attentive—resists the urgency imposed by data and algorithms. This somatic approach aligns with Arendt’s notion of the ‘gap’ between past and future, where ethical thinking becomes possible. Perceptual vigilance, ethical attention, and recognition of temporal folds become acts of resistance, ways of dwelling in a dense, intense now without being consumed by it.

On the Calculation of Volume offers a frame for this intensity. Each fragment of the present is volumetric, measurable yet interconnected, dense yet permeable. The now is a field of relational magnitudes, where every action, data trace, and algorithmic operation contributes to a totality in flux. Time’s volumetric density, akin to matter in space-time, exerts pressure on perception and ethics, accumulating yet remaining fluid.

Drawing on Sloterdijk’s philosophy of ‘spheres and foam,’ the present can be imagined as a bubble within a larger, porous network. Each bubble is a bounded yet interconnected space—individual yet inseparable from its surroundings, much like cells in a living organism. Algorithms carve into these spheres, structuring, intensifying, and documenting them, but the foam’s porosity ensures that no total mastery is possible. These spheres are inhabited spaces of reflection, political judgment, and ethical action; their relationality allows for rupture, contingency, and the emergence of events beyond calculation. In this sense, each volumetric present is both mediated and immediate, enclosed yet open, a site where density and intensity, pressure and accumulation, coexist and interact.

Breath, pause, perception—the present unfolds in thickness, intensity, and relationality. Yet within this density remain gaps, spaces of suspension, as Arendt reminds us, where attention and judgment can surface, where ethical and political choice can intervene. These gaps resist full capture by metrics, algorithms, or the teeth of the temporal monster. Christine Ross’s reflections on the possibility of the event extend this insight: even within a heavily mediated, algorithmically quantified present, occurrences can emerge that exceed calculation, rupture expectation, and open new temporal trajectories. The devouring now is not total with the space of Augmented Reality, for example; within its folds persist spaces for surprise, reflection, and action. One inhabits it not in mastery but in careful attentiveness, navigating between density and openness, intensity and gap, algorithmic imposition and the possibility of the event. Data flows through these structures, producing both pressure and opportunity.

Time presses, bites, enfolds, and in its volumetric density, in its temporality, there is room to dwell, act, and breathe. Hartog’s analysis illuminates the contemporary condition: data and algorithms codify, structure, and circulate the devouring present, giving it density, rhythm, and shape, while promising comprehension that is always provisional, only now. The political stakes are immediate; these instruments organize populations, regulate attention, shape behaviour, and mediate social norms, from predictive policing to real-time financial analytics. To dwell in this Age is to inhabit a temporal field that is both structured and wild, dense yet ephemeral, bounded yet permeable; density accumulates moments, intensity exerts pressure on perception and action. The teeth of the temporal monster bite, constrain, and create the illusion of control, yet within these imprints remain spaces to perceive, attend, act, and judge. The present is not a point to control but a dynamic, ethically charged field to inhabit. By navigating its intensity and density, we resist the illusion of total comprehension and reclaim time as a space for reflection, action, and freedom. It becomes a series of inhabited spheres, measurable, mediated, and experienced, where data and algorithms document, structure, and intensify pressure without exhausting the lived, political, or ethical possibilities of the moment.

See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, 1961. "The gap between past and future, which is the space of thinking, is the space in which freedom can be experienced."

See Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life, 2013 - English translation."With a concept of practice based on a broad anthropological foundation, we finally have the right instrument to overcome the gap, supposedly unbridgeable by methodological means, between biological and cultural phenomena of immunity–that is, between natural processes on the one hand and actions on the other." I will note his thinking is dense. It took me 2.5 years to finish his three part Magnus Opus: Spheres and I don't think I have even scratched the surface of it.
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More thoughts On the Calculation of Volume

James Joyce’s Ulysses transformed modern literature by distilling the immensity of lived experience into the span of a single day. June 16, 1904, becomes in Joyce’s hands a universe unto itself: a temporal container vast enough to hold myth, politics, history, desire, and the smallest gestures of the everyday. The novel’s radical gesture was not merely narrative compression but the demonstration that the totality of modernity, its anxieties, its fragmentations, its pleasures, could be staged within the ordinary hours of a single date. Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume undertakes a similarly ambitious project, though refracted through a contemporary sensibility that is both ecological and philosophical. In Balle’s work, November 18 is not only the date around which Tara Selter’s consciousness circles but also an emblem of how time itself can collapse, repeat, and be lived otherwise.

The significance of November 18, especially in its Danish context, underscores that this is no arbitrary choice. It suggests a historical memory and collective atmosphere imprinted onto the present. Yet in Balle’s rendering, the repetition of this day becomes less about history as event and more about the possibility of inhabiting duration differently. Where Joyce excavates the myths and archetypes lying beneath the surface of modern Dublin, Balle turns to the structures of temporality itself, showing how repetition might create not stasis but a heightened awareness of interconnection. November 18 becomes an aperture through which the density of life (ethical, social, ecological) can be perceived.

As I noted in my other article about these books, the temporal compression of November 18 finds a parallel in the sestertius of Antoninus Pius that Tara Selter contemplates. The coin, depicting Annona with the modius, grain, cornucopia, and ship’s prow, condenses the Roman system of provision into a single, graspable unit, where the measurement of grain enforces both nourishment and governance. The modius standardizes abundance, making it calculable, equitable, and socially legible. In reflecting on this coin, Tara apprehends the ethical and material stakes of measurement, just as the recurring day crystallizes human experience into a disciplined, perceptible unit of time. Measurement, whether of grain or hours, becomes an ethical practice, an engagement with responsibility and the limits inherent in sustaining life, much like the gathering, interpreting, and distributing of data and algorithms, where each unit carries moral weight, shaping outcomes with both insight and consequence.

The resonance with Walter Benjamin’s notion of history as constellations of fragments is strikingly evident in Balle’s work. Perhaps its because his work has been on my mind lately but Benjamin posits that history is not a continuous progression but a montage of moments, objects, and dates that can illuminate the totality of a system when apprehended with insight; each fragment, each artefact, carries the potential to reveal the hidden structures of power, social relation, and human intention. In Balle, both the sestertius and November 18 function precisely as such fragments. The coin, with its depiction of Annona and the modius, condenses the economic, administrative, and symbolic machinery of the Roman Empire into a single tangible unit; November 18 compresses the ethical, temporal, and ecological stakes of modern existence into a recurring day. Together, they operate as microcosms, each having its own aura, carrying within it a dense network of dependencies, obligations, and consequences, where the material, social, and natural orders intersect.

Yet Balle’s use of repetition diverges from Benjamin’s messianic impulse toward redemption. The recurrence of November 18 is not a promise of liberation or fulfilment but a careful interrogation of limits and attentiveness. The reader, following Tara Selter’s consciousness, is invited to inhabit a temporal loop that foregrounds responsibility, patience, and the ethical weight of observation. Each repetition becomes its own sphere or container: an opportunity to measure, to account, to confront scarcity and abundance alike, compelling a sustained focus that parallels the meticulous attention the Roman administration had to give to the distribution of grain. In this sense, Balle transforms Benjamin’s fragmentary flash into a disciplined experience: repetition illuminates the structures and stakes of life not by producing transcendence but by demanding care, precision, and a continuous negotiation with both the natural and social orders. The coin and the day together suggest that understanding the whole is inseparable from attention to the smallest units (whether of grain, of time, or of ethical action) and that these units carry their own weight as sites of reflection, responsibility, and moral reckoning.

In this respect, I was reminded of Byung-Chul Han’s reflections on the exhaustion produced by late-modern temporality and how this provides a counterpoint to Balle’s literary experiment. I find his work to be quite challenging but worthwhile. Han diagnoses contemporary life as dominated by relentless acceleration, the ceaseless expansion of tasks, information, and digital stimuli, and the consequent erosion of coherent narrative or ethical orientation; meaning is dispersed across a multitude of fleeting flows, leaving the individual fatigued, overstimulated, and disoriented. Balle, by contrast, deliberately inverts this condition. In On the Calculation of Volume, November 18 is not a day among many but a temporal loop, a durational container in which events repeat and attention must be sustained. The temporal compression forces a confrontation with the minutiae of existence and the limits of endurance, compelling both protagonist and reader to recover subtle distinctions, relational patterns, and ethical nuances that are ordinarily lost in the acceleration of ordinary life.

Where Han describes exhaustion as the product of constant motion and dispersal, Balle depicts a different form of fatigue: the strain of repetition, the psychological and ethical labour of inhabiting a single day over and over, attending to the consequences of each gesture, thought, and measurement. Yet this repetition is paradoxically generative rather than purely oppressive. By arresting time, Balle opens space for new modes of perception: the attentiveness to measurement, to the ethical distribution of resources, to the interplay of human action and ecological consequence becomes possible precisely because the temporal horizon is constrained. The fatigue here is not a loss of agency but a crucible for intensified awareness, a disciplined encounter with the ethical, temporal, and material stakes of ordinary life. The volume of it all. Through this temporal inversion, Balle stages a critique of modernity’s over-acceleration, showing that slowing, repeating, and attending can reveal dimensions of experience that rapidity conceals, and that the act of returning, calculating, and noticing can itself become a mode of ethical and perceptual renewal, much like meditation or the disciplined rhythm of pranayama cultivates awareness, patience, and a conscious engagement with the flow of breath and time.

The concept of vast, interconnected phenomena that defy easy comprehension resonates with Balle’s text in profound ways. These are occurrences whose scale and duration extend beyond the grasp of typical human understanding—events like climate change or global environmental shifts. In On the Calculation of Volume, November 18 serves as a miniature version of such an overwhelming phenomenon. Though it appears as a single day, its repetition gives it a temporal and ethical magnitude that challenges simple linear understanding. Each recurrence builds upon the previous one, adding layers of consequence and action, creating a sense of accumulating significance that mirrors how large-scale ecological changes unfold over time. Just as these crises stretch across generations and ecosystems, the repeated presence of November 18 compels the reader to engage with time and consequence in new, complex ways.

The hyperobject-like nature of November 18 compels Tara Selter (and, by extension, us, the readers) to inhabit temporality differently. One must attend simultaneously to the immediate, tangible realities of action and measurement and to the broader, often imperceptible consequences that unfold across the infinite loop of the day. This dual awareness mirrors the ecological imperative imposed by climate change: human agency operates within systems whose scale is difficult to grasp, yet it remains consequential. Tara’s recognition that she can “overuse” objects, whether by drinking too much coffee at her usual café until supplies run low or finding something missing from the grocery shelf, further emphasizes how small, individual actions reverberate through larger systems. In these moments, she becomes acutely aware of the fragility and limitations inherent in the cycles of consumption, a reflection of the broader, often invisible systems that govern availability and scarcity.

Balle dramatizes this tension in literary form, using repetition to make perceptible the otherwise invisible structures of responsibility, scarcity, and ethical consequence. In doing so, the novel cultivates a sensibility or an affect attuned to both temporal and ecological depth, encouraging readers to recognize that living responsibly entails not only action but careful, sustained attention to the interplay between the measurable and the immeasurable. In this light, Balle’s work offers a subtle critique of the prevailing data-driven narrative, suggesting that while the rise of algorithms and metrics promises clarity, it often oversimplifies the complexities of human experience. The novel’s focus on repetition and attention to the limits of measurement reminds us that not everything can be quantified, and that some truths, especially those that lie in the realms of ethics, ecology, and human relationships, elude the grasp of data.

Taken together, the coin, the day, and the novel itself function as material arguments about how humans orient themselves in worlds of overwhelming density. Joyce taught us that one day could be all days, that the everyday was vast enough to hold mythic significance. Balle takes up this challenge for our contemporary condition, showing how repetition, stasis, and recursion can equally serve as apertures onto the totality of our lives. November 18 becomes a new “Bloomsday,” not for Dublin but for the precarious world we now inhabit: a world where administration, ethics, ecology, and philosophy converge upon the smallest units of experience, compelling us to ask not only how to live through time but how to live in time differently.

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The Theology of Measurement: Annona, the Modius, and Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Volumes I and II)

Sestertius (Coin) Portraying Emperor Antoninus Pius from the Art Institute of Chicago

I have just finished reading the first two English-translated volumes of Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume. In these volumes, the protagonist, Tara Selter, reflects on a single object whose significance extends far beyond its material form: a sestertius of Antoninus Pius showing Annona enthroned, holding grain and a cornucopia, with a modius and a ship’s prow at her side. Though small and utilitarian, the coin, embodies a dense convergence of administration, ethics, and philosophy. It is not merely a medium of exchange; it functions as a material argument, condensing political, social, and theological reasoning into a tangible and accessible object. This object is a totem used by the author to explore the larger theme of how measurement structures human understanding and moral responsibility, showing that quantification (like that of the temporal unit of the “day” of November 18), is never purely technical but always entwined with ethical, political, and social dimensions.

Through her reflection on the coin, Tara confronts the central concern of the book: how measurement, here represented by the modius, structures both human understanding and moral responsibility. The image of Annona transforms a technical act into a reflection on governance, obligation, and the translation of natural abundance into regulated, distributable form. In the books, Tara becomes Annona. The coin demonstrates that quantification is never purely instrumental; it is simultaneously practical, ethical, and theological. By situating Tara’s encounter within the intellectual and administrative context of imperial Rome, Balle foregrounds a broader meditation on the nature of measurement, its consequences, and its moral significance.

The protagonist encounters not merely an ancient coin but a compressed meditation on the very nature of measure. The sestertius of Antoninus Pius depicting Annona, holding grain and cornucopia, with the modius and a ship’s prow beside her, is never treated as incidental ornament. It functions as a text in its own right, a statement in bronze that carries the weight of theology, administration, and mathematics all at once.

The choice of a sestertius is deliberate. This denomination offered a broad metal disc suitable for allegorical images and political messaging; it was more than a medium of exchange, it was a medium of thought. The Annona type of Antoninus Pius, struck in the 150s, is precisely the kind of object that the protagonist seizes upon: an artefact whose apparent banality conceals a dense weave of symbolism, administrative practice, and philosophical resonance. The coin passes hand to hand, but it also passes idea to idea, translating the act of provision into a language of images.

On its surface, the sestertius stages a double drama. The obverse presents the emperor’s portrait, a carefully chiselled symbol of enduring authority and serenity untouched by war. The reverse depicts Annona, the embodiment of Rome’s sustenance, ensuring that grain reaches the populace. The protagonist recognises that this duality conveys a compact theology of rule in which sovereign power and the material well-being of the people are inseparable; governance is not merely the issuing of decrees but the assurance that bread will reach citizens. Holding the coin is to grasp a microcosm of the empire’s bargain, where loyalty and obedience are repaid with sustenance and order.

This reflection opens into the larger meditation of the narrative. If Annona represents provisioning and the modius is her attribute, then measurement emerges as the hinge of both empire and ecology. The protagonist sees that imperial authority is exercised not only through images, ships, and laws but above all through measure; translating abundance into equitable portions parallels her own understanding that the sustainability of her world depends upon attention to limits and careful accounting of resources. The coin crystallizes a deeper truth: authority, provision, and action, whether imperial or personal, are inseparably bound to measurement and consequence.

The modius occupies a complex space at the intersection of the practical and the symbolic. In everyday Roman life, it was a standardized container for grain, essential to ensuring that the cura annonae, the administration of the city’s food supply, functioned effectively. The emperor was responsible for guaranteeing that each measure distributed to the populace was neither deficient nor excessive, yet on the sestertius, the modius assumes significance beyond the utilitarian; it signifies the translation of nature’s unbounded fertility into a quantity that is comprehensible and governable by human standards. The coin communicates that grain, harvested across distant provinces and transported across the Mediterranean, is made intelligible, distributable, and ultimately just through precise measurement.

Measurement carries a moral and symbolic weight. By resting her hand upon the modius, Annona conveys that volume is not a simple numerical abstraction; abundance must be managed, scarcity moderated, and the gifts of the earth integrated into the social order. The bronze of the coin makes this promise tangible and enduring, circulating among citizens as a reminder that imperial authority extends not only to law and territory but also to the sustenance of life itself. In this way, the act of measuring, ordinarily performed in granaries, is elevated on the coin to a gesture that combines technical exactitude with moral and quasi-theological significance; it prepares the protagonist to reflect on measurement as an act of justice and obligation.

The protagonist comes to understand that the act of measuring is central to the ethical and conceptual framework of the text. The calculation of volume is inseparable from questions of justice and responsibility; every measure carries consequences for the distribution of resources. The modius on the Antoninus Pius sestertius becomes a concrete representation of this principle, demonstrating that the management of abundance requires precision and accountability. The protagonist recognises that excesses of nature can be translated into ordered, comprehensible, and equitable forms only through careful calculation.

She observes that measurement enacts a moral and social contract; to quantify is to mediate between potential chaos and structured provision, between natural plenitude and human need. The modius functions as both a mathematical device and a symbol of responsibility, revealing that human comprehension and moral stewardship are inseparable, and that the act of measurement becomes a disciplined, quasi-theological exercise through which the natural and social orders are harmonized.

Annona is not merely a figure on a coin; she serves as a conceptual lens through which the protagonist understands the relationship between nature, measurement, and human obligation. Unlike Ceres, who embodies growth and fertility, Annona translates the boundless potential of the harvest into a regulated, measurable form that sustains society. Her posture, the placement of the modius, and the presence of the cornucopia and ship’s prow signify governance, order, and provision rather than mere abundance. She mediates between the natural world and human society, demonstrating that volume, when measured, becomes both a material and ethical instrument.

The protagonist notes that mediation operates across scales; from individual granaries to the imperial logistics network, Annona embodies the principle that measurement structures relations between humans and nature. The sestertius communicates that abundance must be mediated through calculation, that provision requires oversight, and that human responsibility is embedded in the act of measurement. Annona thus emerges as a symbol of the theological and moral dimensions of measurement; to quantify is to act within a framework of obligation and care, to convert natural plenitude into ethical order, and to recognise that human intervention is necessary to transform potential into practical sustenance.

Her encounter with the Annona sestertius crystallises the central argument: measurement is never purely technical but always imbued with ethical and quasi-theological significance. Volume is both a mathematical and moral category; it governs physical substances and social relations alike. The modius becomes a point of reflection, showing that quantifying is inseparable from human responsibility and oversight.

Through this encounter, she interprets measurement as a disciplined engagement with the world. To set grain into a modius is to convert potential into ordered provision; to calculate volume is to exercise judgment that mediates between abundance and scarcity. The sestertius demonstrates that the logic of measure extends beyond granaries into broader moral and civic understanding, where precision, accountability, and stewardship are intertwined. It embodies the convergence of human comprehension, ethical responsibility, and governance, making abstract principles tangible and situating the protagonist within a system where mathematics, obligation, and moral reflection are inseparable. Tara’s choice and agency are rife with meaning.

The Annona sestertius, seen through Balle’s lens, encapsulates the text’s exploration of how measurement structures both human understanding and moral responsibility. Calculation is never neutral or purely technical; it is a deliberate act through which abundance is rendered comprehensible, ordered, and ethically distributed. The coin, combining imperial portraiture with symbolic imagery, reveals the intersection of human governance, natural plenitude, and moral obligation. Volume functions as a medium in which mathematics, ethics, and theology converge. Measurement becomes a mode of care; an affect: it is simultaneously practical, moral, and a form of stewardship that binds the natural and social orders. The protagonist’s reflection affirms the central thesis: the theology of measurement, articulated through the modius and Annona, demonstrates that human calculation is a conduit for order, justice, and the harmonization of nature and society.

Further reading: These two books are both valuable resources for understanding how Roman imagery communicates political, ethical, and symbolic meanings, making them especially useful for the analysis of the Annona sestertius in this essay and the book. 
- Paul Zanker – The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus
- Richard Brilliant – Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Roman Art
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The Red Cross on White: Sovereignty, Community, and Visual Memory from Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection to 28 Years Later

This article examines the red cross on white banner as a recurring visual form deeply embedded in shifting contexts of power, identity, and affect. Originating as a protective emblem in medieval maritime and military traditions closely linked to Saint George’s cross, a symbol of chivalric defence and communal solidarity, the banner moves beyond fixed symbolism to function as a dynamic boundary marker. It mediates complex relationships between self and other, sacred and secular, order and chaos. Through its reappearance in both Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection and Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later, this study reveals how visual culture operates as lived environments, a shared space of meaning and feeling where historical experience and political authority are continually negotiated and reconfigured across time and media.

Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection (circa 1463–1465) demands attention not only for its serene, monumental depiction of Christ rising from death but also for the vivid red cross on a white banner that Christ carries. This banner transcends traditional iconography to become a liminal object central to the painting’s complex visual and symbolic architecture. It functions simultaneously as a sign of resurrection, a marker of sovereign authority, and a token of communal identity. Its formal presence is woven through the spatial and political dimensions of the work, inviting a deeper interrogation of its role as a boundary-defining membrane hovering at the threshold between life and death, sacred and civic, order and chaos.

The red cross on white has a history stretching back well before Piero’s time. In the early medieval period, maritime republics such as Genoa and Pisa adopted it as an identifying banner for their ships. Flying this emblem across the Mediterranean was not simply an act of identification but a performative claim to protection and legitimacy. These maritime powers used the banner to signal their Christian affiliation while negotiating the precarious boundaries of trade and conflict. The red cross on white became a floating jurisdiction, a visual claim conferring both divine sanction and legal protection.

By the late twelfth century, the emblem had become closely linked with Saint George, whose legendary battle with the dragon enshrined a narrative of salvation through militant intervention. The banner known as Saint George’s cross was adopted by England and the City of London and raised on ships entering the Mediterranean from around 1190 onwards. The flag signified Christian identity but also English claims to authority in contested political and commercial arenas. The story of Saint George and the dragon embodies a complex relationship between violence and protection, sacrifice and sovereignty. The banner encapsulates this tension as both a symbol of deliverance and a marker of territorial and communal defence.

In Piero’s Resurrection, this banner’s visual and symbolic weight is central. Christ holds it aloft in a posture that is both active and contemplative, standing yet seated in a way that defies simple categorization as Baxandall points out in an essay in Words for Pictures. The banner functions as a vertical axis dividing the pictorial space, its stark red cross cutting through the calm landscape and the sleeping soldiers at Christ’s feet. These soldiers lie in twisted, almost theatrical repose, evoking classical motifs where mortals fall into sleep in the divine presence. Their slumber is a suspension between life and death that mirrors the paradox of resurrection itself.

The painting’s precise use of perspective places the event within a rational, measured space, reflecting Renaissance art’s focus on order and control. Yet Christ’s figure and the banner disrupt this order. The banner remains visually flat and iconic against the scene’s depth, functioning as a sign that exists between representation and symbol. This creates a tension that casts the banner as a boundary object, both material and image, marking the intersection of divine and human realms.

The painting’s original setting further deepens its layered meanings. It was made for the Palazzo della Residenza in Sansepolcro, a place of political governance rather than religious worship. The painted columns, which recall classical motifs, reflect the civic purpose of the space. In this context, the resurrection is not simply a religious event but a metaphor for political renewal and communal identity. The banner Christ carries thus serves as a symbol of sovereignty that unites theological and civic authority, affirming the community’s claim to order and divine favour. A more fluid boundary between the sacred and the profane.

Piero’s composition evokes classical mythology, particularly the story of Zeus, whose presence causes mortals to fall into sleep, blurring the lines between waking and dreaming, presence and absence. Christ’s paradoxical posture, both standing and seated, captures this very tension. The interplay of light and shadow creates sharp contrasts on the tomb and figures, crafting a metaphysical stage where earthly and divine realms meet. The banner’s flatness stands out against the scene’s three-dimensional depth, functioning like a herald’s standard that conveys both representational and symbolic meaning.

The painting’s placement within a civic building dedicated to governance adds a rich and multifaceted layer to its meaning. The architectural framing, including painted columns and classical motifs, deliberately evokes the language of political power and institutional authority. This setting transforms the resurrection from a solely religious event into one deeply embedded within the life and identity of the community’s civic structure. By situating this sacred moment within the space where political decisions were made, the artwork suggests a profound fusion between spiritual and secular realms. Divine authority and civic governance are presented as mutually reinforcing forces, each lending legitimacy and order to the other.

Within this framework, the banner Christ carries assumes a dual role that is both theological and political. On the one hand, it proclaims the divine victory over death, embodying the promise of resurrection and eternal life central to Christian faith. On the other hand, it acts as a powerful symbol of communal sovereignty and social cohesion. The banner asserts the community’s claim to stability and order, signalling a collective identity forged through shared beliefs and governance. It functions as a visible marker of political legitimacy grounded not only in faith but also in the practical necessities of maintaining civic order and solidarity.

This dual significance reveals how power was conceived during the Renaissance as a complex interplay between spiritual sanction and temporal authority. The banner mediates this relationship by bridging theological concepts of salvation with the concrete realities of political life. It stands as a tangible symbol through which divine mandate and social institution converge, reinforcing the idea that civic authority is inseparable from the sacred. In doing so, the banner becomes more than an emblem; it embodies the intertwined nature of sovereignty, community, and transcendence within Renaissance culture, reminding viewers that political power is always underwritten by deeper metaphysical claims.

This emblem’s persistence resonates powerfully in Danny Boyle’s 2025 film 28 Years Later, where the red cross on white flies above a fortified English enclave set within a barren, post-apocalyptic world. While removed from its original sacred and civic contexts, the banner retains its core associations with sovereignty, protection, communal identity, and traditional Christian resurrection. In the film, it functions as a complex symbol of resurrection, exclusion, and survival, a fragile claim to authority amid the breakdown of social order and the constant threat of contagion.

In this dystopian environment, the banner continues to signify resurrection and divine sanction in the traditional sense. At the same time, it marks a clear boundary between the enclave’s survivors and the hostile, chaotic world beyond, a world devastated by viral plague and inhabited by the infected. The banner acts as a membrane that both protects those within and excludes those outside, drawing lines of inclusion and exclusion that are political, social, and existential. It defines fragile limits of safety and belonging in a reality where trust is scarce and order has collapsed.

The emotional power of the banner remains strong, recalling the protective logic embedded in its medieval Mediterranean origins and the militant saint whose legend shaped the symbol’s meaning. This connection reveals how visual signs are adapted to new contexts, expressing ongoing human struggles with survival, identity, authority, and hope. In 28 Years Later, the banner suggests a desperate effort to reclaim legitimacy, sovereignty, and the promise of renewal amidst the ruins of political and social structures.

Further complexity arises in the banner’s symbolism within this post-apocalyptic narrative. It simultaneously gestures toward the resurrection of humanity, as a hope for survival and renewal, and the grim return of the undead, virus-made zombies embodying chaos, death, and uncontrollable rage. This dual meaning complicates the banner’s message, making it a marker of both life and death, order and dissolution. It captures the paradox of a community striving to maintain control and meaning while facing overwhelming forces.

Boyle’s use of this emblem creates tension between nostalgia for a lost social order and the urgent, precarious conditions of life in the present. The banner stands not simply as a nationalist or territorial flag but as a symbol charged with the emotional weight of memory, loss, faith, and the human will to endure. Its survival across centuries and media demonstrates the capacity of visual culture to carry historical memory and political theology into new realms, adapting as a dynamic site where past and present, sacred and secular, life and death converge.

The ongoing transformation of the red cross on white reveals how visual symbols carry complex histories while responding to new political and emotional demands. Both Piero’s fresco and Boyle’s film use the banner as a visual device that shapes space, defines identity, and mobilizes affect. Its clarity and legibility allow it to function as a boundary or sphere, separating life from death, inclusion from exclusion, and order from chaos. Its persistence across time and media underlines its role not as a fixed meaning but as a contingent, evolving instrument of power.

This approach avoids reductive allegory or oversimplification. Instead, it highlights how images like the red cross on white operate as vessels for political theology, visual culture, and affective experience. As the banner travels from the frescoed walls of a Tuscan civic palace to the dystopian landscapes of contemporary cinema, it carries a history of sovereignty and community that remains both ancient and urgently relevant. Its migration and transformation teach us how visual forms negotiate power, identity, and survival across moments of historical rupture.

In addition to the other Baxandall mentioned in the text, here are the works that are behind my thinking: 

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford University Press, 1972.

Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art. Harper & Row, 1960.