iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The connection between melancholia and geometry can perhaps be seen in the potential influence of this contemporaneous woodcut depicting 'geometria' from Gregor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica, Strasbourg, 1504. (Panofsky et al., p. 312).

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Next Saturday, the 17th, I will be part of the Sydosten 2026 salon at Kalmar Konstmuseum, opening at 14:30. Here are some pages showing the work and my brief statement. As well as the seemingly recently ubiquitous connection to Dürer's Melancolia I and Benjamin's Trauerspiel book...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Inspiration for today... The Melancholic. C. Ripa, Iconologia. 1603

C. Ripa's etching illustrating The Melancholic. From the Iconologia, 1603.
A bearded man with his mouth gagged and a bird nesting on his head holds a sack in one hand and a large book, which he is reading intensely, in the other.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Really, all I want to do today is read the Saxl, Panofsky, and Klibansky book on Saturn and Melancholy... Perfect for a grey October Saturday. But there is work to be done...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I found it. The lecture was a higher seminar by Andrew Benjamin, and the etching is reproduced in his book 'Art's Philosophical Work'. It is De Maria Virgine (1583) by Petrus Canisus.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My Žižek story is that he signed my book 'To Liam Neeson' because when I said my name was Liam he started telling me how good it was to have that name because I would receive displaced sexual fantasies intended for Liam Neeson...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Found the notes from my first encounter with critical theory as an undergrad in 1999... I still haven't finished that reading list.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've been looking at auctions for astrolabes a lot recently... Forget this humanistic clock/GPS orientation in time and space... I want to know my cosmological position, that is, my place in both the cosmos and the logos.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I had this thought 7 months ago, but today I discovered that of course Panofsky had written about it 75 years earlier...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Here is the work (plus artist). Many thanks to Helle and Ed for their thoughtful curation and overall fantastic show. I originally envisaged the piece on the wall, but they tested it with the table, and I agree that it gives it an archival character that elevates it to another level.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I made some edits to emphasise the contrast and to give it more of an Andreas Gursky vibe... It still does not quite capture the feeling of the desolate expanse of the hillside rising up towards the sky as you come out from the forest.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The greyness of a recently logged hillside against the greyness of impending rain... Welcome to Sweden in autumn.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

'Genius' is problematic. But it also provides a thread to follow back into the Trauerspiel book, where Benjamin devotes a long section to 'Dürer's genius of winged melancholy' (p. 158). A connection already made in his assertion that 'in great men [the empty world of mere life] produced melancholy.'

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My uncle has a copy of the 'Shred' and sent me a picture of the first page... 'unfamiliar and unattractive'? Judge for yourself.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I was keen to read it because of the large presence that Jorgenson had in my youth as my grandfather wrote a book about him (Muller calls it the 'indispensable text'), and the fact that after growing up in Tasmania, I now live just a few hours from Jorgenson's birthplace of Copenhagen.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Finally received a copy of Konrad Muller's 'My Heart at Evening', hand-delivered by my father all the way from Tasmania. It recounts a fictionalised event in the life of one Jorgen Jorgenson, where he is sent to investigate the historically factual suicide of the surveyor Henry Hellyer in 1834.

The book 'My Heart at Evening' by Konrad Muller, resting on a tote bag from The Hobart Book Shop.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I mention fate, which is not part of Agamben's analysis. Rather this connects with Benjamin's nexus of mythic violence, fate, guilt, law, and mere life – the creaturely, as he calls it in the Trauerspiel book. An earlier essay, 'Fate and Character', also hints at a way to escape this demonic fate.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Next weekend I will be participating in the exhibition Ö/ver/leva [Survive] at YellowBox Arts on Öland, curated by Helle Kvamme and Ed Whittaker. The possibility of some life beyond life (över leva – sur vivre) led me back to Walter Benjamin and his distinction between mere life and the living.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Thanks to @manymanyplies.bsky.social for drawing my attention to this fantastic piece of 17th-century marginalia: Is cheese rational? In answering this question we can turn to an event from Manfred Kuehn's biography of Immanuel Kant, that great and 'all-crushing' critic of reason.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

You live your entire life without ever coming across the word 'quondam' and then suddenly read two books in a row that use it... Curiously both were Australian: My Heart at Evening by Konrad Muller (pictured) and My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

In the Cisternerne, Copenhagen.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I went to the Sidney Nolan Trust, but was more taken with the slate roofs than any of the art... Amazing old buildings.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

A few days up in Stockholm resulted in a pretty good haul. Thanks to August Antikvariat, @ronnellsantivaria.bsky.social and Söderbokhandeln.

Five books lying on black floorboards:
Watt by Samuel Beckett
Eye of the Monkey by Krisztina Tóth
Efterlämnat by Lars Norén
The Left-handed Woman by Peter Handle
Walker Benjamin The Story of a Friendship by Gershom Scholem

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I recently stayed in a hotel that should have had that name... But which was unfortunately not as impressive on the inside; a rather bland corporate conference centre...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Checked back into Grand Hotel Abyss again for the summer...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Slowly repairing the concrete of our front steps before the ice returns... A shame, as I quite like the decoration of this winding fissure.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

As part of the price for his assistance in writing the manuscript, along with the soul of the monk of course, the devil demanded that his portrait was included. Here is a file picture:

Portrait of the devil in the Codex Gigas.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Here is a picture from when I saw it in the Kungliga biblioteket (National Library) in Stockholm last year. The display is not as nice as the Uppsala museum... It is hard to see the size: 89x49 cm, 75kg!

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Here are a couple of pictures from when I did get a chance to see it in 2020.

Detail of the Gothic script in the Codex Argenteus.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Also saw Uppsala's oldest 'profane building'.

The Cathedral staircase -- Uppsala's oldest profane building.

UPPSALA'S OLDEST PROFANE BUILDING

The cathedral staircase is probably Uppsala's oldest profane building and is first mentioned in 1376 in a list of the cathedral's land properties. Tower part and stairs were built first. Later in the Middle Ages, wings were added on both sides of the tower. Large parts of both tower and wings have medieval bricks.

The house formed part of the precinct walls around the church and the staircase was one of several exits from Domkyrkoplan.

Originally, only the upper part of the stairs was overbuilt. Alterations have been made on a number of occasions. The staircase was badly damaged in the city fire of 1702, and the tower and wings got their current appearance in the 1760s. The brick in the façade of the tower facing the cathedral and Domkyrkoplan was laid bare as late as 1960.

Through the centuries, the house has had number of different owners and a range of uses. It has been used as homes, hospital sheds, a cathedral school, a student prison and shops. For nearly three hundred years, the house has been in the possession of the church and is used by the Church of Sweden Uppsala as office premises. In 1937, the restaurant Domtrappkällaren opened on the street level facing the city.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

A quick trip to Uppsala to visit the Cathedral, eat some good food (not pictured), and find a copy of Queen by Birgitta Trotzig (translated by Saskia Vogel).

An ornate door and tympanum of Uppsala Cathedral

The book Queen by Birgitta Trotzig (translated by Saskia Vogel).

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

This is because the word used for 'unravel' or 'loosen' is ἀλλύεσκεν, a form of the verb ἀναλύω from which we get the English word analyse. Now when I hear the word analyse, I always see Penelope at night surrounded by torches, working at unweaving her earlier work on the funeral shroud of Laertes.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Sunday: Seeded sourdough and pita bread baked. Mangetout and beans blanched and frozen. Cucumbers picked and pickled with dill crowns.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

While scrubbing moss off paving stones this afternoon, I listened to two episodes of In Our Time. One on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and one on Dylan Thomas. What did I learn? 1. Many of the scrolls concern the apocalypse. 2. Thomas was part of a group of poets called The New Apocalyptics....

Beautiful, clean paving stones standing on their ends drying, no moss in sight anywhere...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

This Saturday, @lindapersson.bsky.social and I will be part of the summer exhibition programme at Årstads Mycket Tillfälliga Konsthall. The overall title of the programme is Paradise, and our installation, referencing Benjamin, is titled 'But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise'. arstadskonsthall.se

A selection of rather abstract photographs laid out on black floorboards.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Here is how those trees (and that nothingness) look...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Kearney continues: 'And this empty receptacle at the core of the circle is, arguably, none other than the womb-heart of Mary herself (khora). As the Greek inscription of the Mother and Child Mosaic of the Monastery of the Khora in Istanbul reads: Khora akhoraton—"Container of the Uncontainable."'

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

The three figures in the vision are influenced by Andrei Rublev's Icon of the Trinity and Richard Kearney's description: 'the three angels are seated in a circle around an empty chalice—symbol of the gap in our horizons of time and space where the radically Other may arrive, unexpected and unknown.’

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

You can read about this rubbish heap, the disenchantment of the world it represents, the snowy landscape within which it sits, and the novel it inspired in this interview I did with the fantastic @minorliteratures.bsky.social Many thanks to @monalisavitti.bsky.social and @tobiasvryan.bsky.social

A pile of rubbish, mainly pallets, covered in snow, sitting at the edge of a forest.
'For those who looked deeper saw the scene of their existence as a rubbish heap of partial, inauthentic actions. Life itself protested against this.'
– Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Printing up some of my photographs for an upcoming exhibition with @lindapersson.bsky.social at Årstads Mycket Tillfälliga Konsthall in Falkenberg in July.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

And grids, more Benjamin: ‘The magic square, which is inscribed on the tablet at the head of Dürer’s Melancolia, is the planetary sign of Jupiter, whose influence counteracts the dismal force of Saturn’ And what would happen if you piled hundreds of stones into a grid, would it form a conjunction?

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I'm thinking very much of stones. Benjamin notes, ‘There is, however, one symbol that which seems to have been passed over in the re-discovery of the older symbols of melancholy embodied in this engraving … This is the stone.’

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I've been spending a bit of time with Melancolia recently, specifically Dürer's Melancolia I (1514), along with Benjamin's taxonomy of melancholy in the Trauerspiel book, Warburg's account of pagan renewal in Reformation Germany, and Saxl and Panofsky of course...

The engraving Melancolia I (1514) by Albrecht Dürer.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Yesterday was 'Sweden's National Day' supposedly after the election of Gustav Vasa as King of Sweden in 1523, but only a tradition since 1916. Today we went to Viserum to honour the freedom fighter Nils Dacke, a Småland peasant who led a popular revolt against Vasa and his Reformation.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Reminds me of the documentary on Romanian anchorites.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Okay, a list of a hundred books I've read and think are quite good. Only one book per author, no particular order. It reveals the peculiarities and prejudices of my taste, certainly... But I tried to be honest with what I've read and recall. I might make some annotations below...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

You go into the Scuola di San Rocco and see the most amazing Tintorettos and then the exit leads you straight into an alleyway where the walls are covered in pigeon shit -- From the sublime to the profane in one go...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

General tarnishing and decay of the world...

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