what is the catalogue of wonders?

many viewers will ask themselves this question (or perhaps should). where has it come from, what does it do, why is it here? personally i can think of three main points when answering the above.

the catalogue of wonders represents a golden chance to divulge new and unknown artists (working in several differing forms of media) to the world. in an increasingly homogenised society (and despite the myriad forms of communication available to the individual – internet, tv, radio, etc) it is increasingly difficult to easily find anything that isn’t within the narrow band of ‘mainstream’ forms. just listen to a conversation in a bar or pub, everyone talks about the same stuff. be it ‘britain got talent’ or ‘big brother’, people tend to talk of the same things. perhaps with all that is so easily available we have become lazy and lost the need to search out new things. but isn’t that part of the excitement of life? i have sometimes made purchases based on the fact that the work had a beautiful cover without knowing anything of the artist contained within. catalogue of wonders fills that gap with access to new works by new people >>>

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catalogue of wonders also embodies an independence that has mostly disappeared these days from most imprints (think of the golden days of factory records, 4ad, zang tumm tumm etc). when looking at the record (or cd for that matter) sleeve and especially keeping in mind the above mentioned imprints, gone are the days of covers being beautiful and being seen as works of art themselves. recently, when venturing around the wonderful berardo collection in belém (lisbon), i was delighted to see a small exhibit of classic factory records sleeves for new order and joy division, designed by the now classic designer peter saville. no one can deny that they are works of art in themselves. catalogue of wonders keeps this tradition alive with its beautiful and challenging artwork for each individual body of work presented >>

returning to the theme of the homogenised and globalised world we live in, catalogue of wonders represents an increasingly rare chance for artists to present their own individual works without interference, no meddling from ‘the majors’ here, no product placement or extra’s or packaging as a boy band or a girl band. just the work. just the beauty >>> words by steven lee rees 17/04/2010 >

>>> Necessity is mother of invention, apparently, and sloth the father of creation, hum! Who said that? Twenty five

years ago someone dreamt of starting a fanzine, called simply ‘bulletin’, full a3 pages folded in the vertical,

unusual format for a photocopied format. All copies disappeared. Still there is the memory of that first and only issue of the ‘bulletin’. On the cover there was a black and white photograph (close up) of a baby from a sony

advert. Inside there was these lists of obsessions and loves, poems, tiny articles decorated with black and white photos,collages and there was also an appendix in a5 format with a chapter from a novel by kutagawa (imported from brazil and at the time not translated to Portuguese.) the second addenda in a5 format, if i remember well, was a biography of jean genet. The ‘bulletin’ wrote about the music of david sylvian also, i remember now, at the time, or just afterwards,the release of the album ‘secrets of the behive.’ Remembering or not the contents of that fanzine

(20 copies, handmade?) what stayed until today was/is the motive, the inspiration. The ‘bulletin’ was born out of frustrationand boredom with the ‘normal’ media and the desire to share things that at the time almost no one listen andheard much less read or seen. A community of young boys and girls that had a lot of time in their hands and, they thought, something different to tell and show to the little world surrounding them. This was in 1985, the country

was Portugal of the little thoughts and little happenings, and we felt a rage mixed up with ecstasy of going to college with the folded fanzine and trying to sell it to our fellow students. We sold them all, i think, including my own copy. Twenty years on, the country is England and the place is London, metropolis of dreams and disasters, ambitions and depression, a grey place that the colourful postcards represent in a touristic way, false, fake and glamorous it isn’t. If you do not have a great paid job, you are ruined. All is grey and expensive. The live music scene is fantastic, the art museums extraordinary but, and that is a very big but, everything spins/exists around money. O, well, London is the capital of capitalism, you would say. But then there is the anger and hunger for things different >>>

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> they wrote that seeing the world as an image on a screen, and seeing a picture as a projected, refracted,

reflected image was a rather different way of thinking about visual art from the idea of looking out on things through a window ; others objected on the perishable state of formalist art; others of buddha and others said that it was the end of a world and the beginning of another… what they said is recorded on books, videos, electronic media and available on the net. some said that there was nothing else new, all was invented already; others that god was dead, being it ian curtis or christ; electricity replaced steam and coal, valves by silicon and now; ladies and gentlemen: welcome to the age of disinformation, spin, fastness, sex and horror of towers exploding in the air,

and where all is available. invent an invention… invent an invention ordained already, constructing another path, as

told, the good son, pieces here and there, a figment of seeing things, rise early and have goat milk and crumbles

of dreams and nightmares, always stories as lies, aside the melancholy of the pebbles on a beach, the murmurs

and laughter of others... invent an explanation to convince one of one's history. almost blasphemy these words…

some have and some don’t, as they say also. stories r human’s fabled way to keep dreaming, to run away

to other lands and times, so we do also have a short story to tell, compiled by those that lived it, researching

here and there, diaries, photographs, cd’s, dvd’s, notebooks, making long distance phone calls, visiting lunatic’s

asylums, wondering on the lost ark of memories, re-reading letters and emails, and it starts, as

good old lullabies: once upon a time…

 >>>

so, what is the catalogue of wonders?

catalogue noun ( LIST )

(US usually catalog) /%u02C8kæt.%u0259l.%u0252g//%u02C8kæt%u2006%u032C.%u0259l.%

•

[C] a book with a list of all the goods that you can buy from a shop

a mail-order catalogue

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy

curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven

reddened face, coughing. He raked his whose Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee is a Dada classicthroat rudely, puked phlegm on the

floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it,

and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.

•                                                                                                                                       

[C] a list of all the books, paintings, etc. that exist in a place

catalogue noun ( BAD EVENTS )

(US usually catalog) /%u02C8kæt.%u0259l.%u0252g//%u02C8kæt%u2006%u032C.%u0259l.%

 n

[S] A catalogue of unwanted events is a series of them

The whole holiday was a catalogue of disasters.

 >>>

a catalogue of errors/crimes/complaints Exhibitions, 

catalogues and books on twentieth-century art have generally presented a 

transition, the dialogue 

          between hyperbole and finite structure, between

          that which exceeds the totality and the:                                                                     

catalogue verb

/%u02C8kæt.%u0259l.%u0252g//%u02C8kæt%u2006%u032C.%u0259l.%u0251%u02D0g/ v [T]

to record something, especially in a list

Many plants become extinct before they have even been catalogued.

_--Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in

listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment

since by my learned philosophy and psychology. It was while at university that he met a friend.

It seemed to me that I had been transported

into a country far away from this country, It is at this stage where a brief description of the differences

between an age remote from I didn't like the death-hussars,And not the howitzers with girls' names,

And at the end when the great days came,I went discreetly away.

this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the

speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses._

of preposition ( POSSESSION )

weak form /%u0259v/strong form /%u0252v//%u0251%u02D0v/ prep

used to show possession, belonging or origin

a friend of mine

the president of the United States

employees of the company

the colour of his hair

a habit of mine

that revolting dog of hers

the love of a good woman

the complete plays of (= written by) Federico Garcia Lorca

A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's

church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.

     _Heigho! Heigho!

     Heigho! Heigho!

     Heigho! Heigho!_

wonder verb ( QUESTION )

/%u02C8w%u028Cn.d%u0259r//-d%u025A/ v

•

[I] to ask yourself questions or express a wish to know about something

[+ question word] Hadn't you better phone home? Your parents will be wondering where you are.

He's starting to wonder whether he did the right thing in accepting this job.

[+ speech] Will this turkey be big enough for eight, I wonder?

"Have you decided where you're going next summer?" "I've been wondering about (= considering)

going to Florida."

• An evening with music, dance, manifestos, theory, poems, pictures, masks and costumes

used in phrases, at the beginning of a request, to make it more formal and polite

[+ speech] I wonder - could you help me carry these books?

[+ question word] I wonder whether you could pass me the butter?

I wonder if you could give me some information about places to visit in the area?

--I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and

many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no

better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten

years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the

strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke,

prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low great rumour new men see in paper -

and only see a world of crystalsimplicitymetal - neither art nor painting. Many errors, many

failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my

days. But I will fight for the right till the end.

wonder verb ( SURPRISE )

/%u02C8w%u028Cn.d%u0259r//-d%u025A/ v

[I] slightly formal to feel or express great surprise at something

[+ (that)] He was behaving so badly at school today, I wonder (that) he wasn't sent home.

I don't wonder (that) she burst into tears after the way you spoke to her.

do/work wonders

informal

to have a very good effect

Doctors have discovered that keeping a pet can do wonders for your health.

wonders never cease

humorous

an expression of surprise used when something unusual or unexpected happens

Lynda actually managed to get up before ten o'clock. Wonders never cease!

work wonders/miracles

(UK also work a treat)

to produce very good effects

A little bit of oil works wonders on squeaky hinges.

Running works wonders for the metabolism.

He held up a forefinger of warning.

     _--If anyone thinks that I amn't divine

     He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine

     But have to drink water and wish it were plain

     That i make when the wine becomes water again But the confusion was only a cover. The provocations,

demonstrations and oppositions were only a means to provoke the bourgois' rage and bring them to a rude a

wakening. What really moved us was not so much the dispute, the contradiction and the 'anti per se', but

rather the elementary question of these days (as of today) WHERE-TO-GO?

boy wonder noun

n [C]

a young man who has achieved more than what is expected for his age

(Definition of boy wonder noun from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

chinless wonder noun

n [C] UK informal

a silly man, typically of high social class

one-hit wonder noun

/%u02CCw%u028Cn.h%u026At%u02C8w%u028Cn.d%u0259r//-d%u025A/ n [C] informal

a performer of popular music who makes one successful recording but then no others A meaningless term

improperly derived from the above. There is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine of

interpretation of existing facts.