for ipod download Scholar of the Arcane Arts

Living in what often felt like the decline of the old city, the prophetic words of Victorian historian and politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay came to mind: Between us, we attended to art and the failing state, and shared in the turmoil and joy that comes with residing in the English capital. She was working as an artist and I as an early childhood teacher in a calamitous academy school. I met Spong in 2021, in London, as a fellow New Zealander sharing the years of Brexit and Covid. This is a decisive shift in her work of the last decade, one that can be traced to her completion of a Master’s degree at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, in 2013. Spong is based in the United Kingdom, where her recent practice has orientated towards the women she refers to as ‘mystic writers’. I had searched online using the University directory-Spong’s name produced a long list including entries about dance, the Walters Prize, art in the Asia-Pacific region, and books published through her dealer gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau. They offer a warm greeting, and I repeat the thesis title: “‘Scirinz (a running sore): particular and ecstatic scripts of the body by mystic women in the Middle Ages and early Modern Europe’. The university librarian wears a Breakers jersey and a cap that reads Aotearoa.

The books aren’t chained here, locked to the shelves as they were in monastic libraries, or cursed at the final page of inscription.

It’s the thought that carries me into the General Library of the University of Auckland. LIBRARIANS WERE MONKS in medieval Europe.

For ipod download Scholar of the Arcane Arts