Volatilia at Barrister’s, and the Robot Parade!

VOLATILIA

Opening Saturday, November 10, 6-9pm

through December 3

Barrister’s Gallery
2331 St. Claude Ave.
New Orleans, LA

Averting this season’s squashed attempt at rallying limited resources for an annual Automata exhibit, we instead have concentrated efforts on a condensed exhibition at Barrister’s Gallery, called Volatilia.   This revised show will feature mechanical sculpture as well as experiments in static 2 & 3d work, hooked together by our new theme.

Volatilia is a pseudo-mystical exposition concerning the ephemera of escape, or, the debris that results from the efforts it takes to do so.

Volatilia is a latin word meaning:

matters of flight

flying things

of birdsrelated familiar words:  volatile, volare

Volatilia is seen in a biblical phrase meaning “the birds of heaven,” though I think it gets translated another boring way, so maybe I’m wrong.  It makes sense to think of volatilia as things that fly in gaseous, infinite realms, like Mrs. Whatsit as a centaur in A Wrinkle In Time.

Volatilia is also the title of one of Coleridge’s notebooks:

With self-deprecating humour, Coleridge alluded to the impossibility of pinning down anything as elusive as a thought by calling his later notebooks ‘Fly-catchers’: the notebook pages function like fly paper, trapping the living thoughts or ‘winged words’ and preserving them for all time, but at the cost of that very living quality which made them worth preserving.  A variation on this title occurs in Notebook 56, which bears the title ‘Volatilia or Day-book for bird-liming Small Thoughts, impounding Stray Thoughts, and holding for trial doubtful Thoughts’

Please click here to view the working list of artists, and visit Barrister’s Gallery for more information in the coming weeks.

THE ROBOT PARADE!  Sponsored by Git Hub.

No longer just flying robots, but a slew of as many varieties a krewe can manage.

H. Cole Wiley is coordinating the parade, and hosting workshops in his upper 9th ward studio.  The parade is still projected for mid-November, likely in the St. Roch neighborhood, with several great neighborhood partnerships in the works.  If you would like to participate or get more information, please add your name and contact to our Robot Parade spreadsheet under the “I am interested” category, or via this blog.

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