The Land of Noman

 

 

The work Land of Noman[1] concerns to the transformations of a female persona which represents the three different societies visited by Ulysses.

 

Three islands, three societies, three women represented by female performers in bodily transformations.

 

The video consists of three parts each one interconnected to the Homeric narration through Ulysses novel by James Joyce.

 

 

 

There are three movements from one island to the other

 

1.                 Calypso- The pre-civilized island Ogygia[2]. A place of pathological inactivity, place of the fantastic, exotic island belonging to the land of geographic imagination.

 

2.                 Nausicaa- The over-civilized island Skheria. Ulysses is re-establishing his body, thinking about the future, peaceful, utopic, ideal place.

 

3.                 Penelope- Place of reality, island Ithaca. Penelope (in U represented by Molly) lying on the bed.

 

 

 

 Literature on the concept:

 

The labyrinthal Ulysses of James Joyce[3], consists a multi-layered text where facts seem to proceed in time overlapping, though the action takes place in 18 chapters spaced approximately one hour apart, starting at 8:00am on Thursday 16 June 1904, and ending in the early hours of June 17. Joyce produced a schema for the novel Ulysses to help his friend Carlo Linati understand the structure of the book.

"As to Mr Dessy's suggestion I think that in view of the enormous bulk and the more than enormous complexity of my damned monster-novel it would be better to send him a sort of summary - key - skeleton - scheme (for home use only)...I have given only "Schlagworte" [catchwords] in my scheme but I think you will understand it all the same. It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses has fascinated me ever since boyhood. …For seven years I have been working at this book - blast it! It is also a kind of encyclopaedia. My intention is not only to render the myth sub specie temporis nostri [in the light of our own times] but also to allow each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the somatic scheme of the whole) to condition and even to create its own technique. Each adventure is so to speak one person although it is composed of persons - as Aquinas relates of the heavenly hosts." James Joyce, Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 271.

 

Calypso

Scene: The House

Hour: 8 am

Organ: Kidney

Art: Economics

Colour: Orange

Symbol: Nymph

Technic: Narrative (mature)

Correspondences: Calypso - The Nymph; Dlugacz: The Recall; Zion - Ithaca

Meaning:The departing wayfarer

 

Nausicaa

Scene: The Rocks

Hour: 8 pm

Organ: Eye, Nose

Art: Painting

Colour: Grey, Blue

Symbol: Virgin

Technic: Tumescence, Detumescence

Correspondences: Phaeacia - Star of the Sea; Gerty – Nausicaa

Meaning: The projected mirage

 

Ithaca

Scene: The House

Hour: 2 am

Organ: Skeleton, juices

Art: Science

Colour: starry, milky

Symbol: Comets

Technic: Catechism (impersonal)

Correspondences: Eurymachus - Boylan; Suitors - Scruples; Bow – Reason

Meaning: Armed hope

 

Penelope

Scene: The Bed

Hour: -

Organ: Flesh,  Fat

Art: -

Colour: starry, milky, new dawn

 

 

Joyce created the eighteenth  chapter for Penelope as an epilogue . In the work The Land of Noman, Ithaca and Penelope are considered as one chapter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.      Ogygia-Calypso

 

Correspondences of Joyce: kidney, orange,

Homeric correspondences: inactivity, pathological situation, place of the fantastic.

 

Video description:

Calypso providing the Kidney.

 

 

2.    Skheria- Nausicaa

 

Nausicaa is presented as a mutant woman, as a  notion of  hyper-civilized femininity. Scene: The Rocks

Correspondences of Joyce:  grey, blue, virgin, blood, topic, flowers, female optacy, pornography,

Homeric correspondencies: Utopic, non known objects, quietness, hyper-civilized.

 

Video description:

Nausicaa is forming the island shape of Skheria corresponding to femininity and at the same time captivity.

Η υποδοχή και η παγίδευση, ο εγκλεισμός του Οδυσσέα.

 

 

 

a. rocks correspond to small bits of Nitron (N) or salpeter (etymologically deriving from Medieval Latin sal petrae: "stone salt" or possibly "Salt of Petra=salt of stone"), νίτρον (nitron) = salpeter + γείνομαι (geinomai) = to engender, bring forth

 

b. Virginity is emphasized in this part by the presence of blood -here in a blue  mixture of Kalium(Potassium carbonate, K2CO3)  with Phosphorus (P)- ,  exerted from the female genitalia. Blood is blue in correspondence with phosphorus, alchemically produced by urine.)

 

3.      Ithaca-Penelope

 

Penelope on the bed, wet, she puts silicone connecting her breasts of vitality.

 

Video description:

 

Penelope is forming raw energy between her breasts, she affirms the fertilization by the fissiparity of the silicon pattern on her body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symbol: Earth, (alchemical symbol of earth as presented on the female body)

 

Penelope - Earth; Web – Movement

 

Joyce correspondences: Technic: Monologue (female), resigned style

Meaning:The past sleeps.

Homeric correspondences: Place of the real

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and references

1. ‘ My name is No-Man; No-Man each degree Of friends, as well as parents, call my name.'

Odysseus conceived the name ‘No-Man’ (hellenic Ούτις/ Utis= nobody) to introduce himself and later deceive Cyclops Polyphemus by its double meaning.

 

2. Ogygia and Skheria are mentioned as phantom islands.

Phantom islands are islands that are believed to exist and appear on maps for a period of time (sometimes centuries), and then are removed after they are proven not to exist (or the general population stops believing that they exist).

 

3. Joyce noted for the last chapter of Ulysses:

The clou of the book. The first sentence contains 2500 words. There are eight sentences in the episode. It begins and ends with the female word yes. It turns the huge earth ball slowly surely and evenly round and round spinning, its four cardinal points being the female breasts, arse, womb and cunt expressed by the words because, bottom (in all senses bottom button, bottom of the class, bottom of the sea, bottom of his heart), woman, yes. Though probably more obscene than any preceding episode it seems to me to be perfectly sane full amoral fertilisable untrustworthy engaging shrewd limited prudent indifferent Weib. Ich bin der [sic] Fleisch der stets bejaht (Letter to Frank Budgen, 16.viii.1921, SL, 285)

 

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Images:The Land of Noman

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