My Dream! (well, kinda)

Since last December when Old Ken actually contemplated started this humble blog, the question of exactly what might appear on it has been an object of no small consideration. Certainly, there are many stories I want to share with you—about my culinary preferences, about my birth, and about the adventures of my lovely sister (more to follow). But, the O.K. has also had ambitions of a different sort: to share the most disturbing advertisements I could possibly find. I mean, what is a panda bear doing serving bottled beef? That is just wrong!

But, I jest. Instead, my dream was this: like many friends with an interest in all things experimental, I happen to go to a quite a few talks, lectures, conferences ... things of that nature. Now, one can't go to everything one might want to hear (and believe me, there are many I wish I had not heard). The dream, however, was that Old Ken could make the humble gesture of passing along some notes of things he thought might be of interest to the greater experimental community from those talks he actually attended. Others might even then be moved to start their own blogs, and we could do a kind of 'exciting-note-swapping' gift exchange. As we say in Quito, 'que divertito'!

Now, in the future, Old Ken may want to pass along a more thorough, discursive 'take' on a conference or exhibit; but, my notion has been that you, my friend, might equally be interested in a more atmospheric presentation of my findings. As we will see, the latter is on tap for today.
But, to back up, the attended event itself was called "Conundra of Vision," held in Cambridge and designed to explore issues in the visual culture of Latin America. Old Ken was most interested to attend as old friend Tom Cummins (pictured below) was in the house, gracing ye Olde Country (and, hopefully, the Old Country Buffet) with his wit and wisdom. For you friends who follow Señor Tom's ways, he gave an interesting talk that synthesized familiar bits of Tom-lore (i.e. his work on the display of Inca portraits at the court of Charles V/Phillip II and his reading of the "The Gentlemen of Esmereldas" portrait) with an exploration of the gender/genre problem, via an emblem of a beared lady published by Covarrubias the year prior to publication of his famous dictionary.


The effort was (again, in a familiar Cummins way) to argue for the slipperiness of identities during the colonial period—using the androgyny of figures like the emblem or that of the militant angels in the fabulous Peruvian painting genre of the 17th c. to explore how markers of gender, race and ethnicity could be conflated and by whom. Old Ken found that this integration worked best when Tom stepped away from his spoken text and exposited during the questions period.



Next up on the conference schedule (after a much-needed session around the coffee urn) was Esther Acevedo who gave a talk on periodical illustration in mid-1860s Mexico. As Old Ken's Spanish was a bit rusty (and the talk was in that fine tongue), he listened politely but mostly drew.



"Lunch" (so-called) was next on the agenda. Below you will be able to get a sense of what it is that many English people call lunch. Note the extensive presence of mayonnaise. I went out and bought my own lunch, thank you.



In the afternoon, we were treated to a talk by Jesús Martín Barbera, which I believe was on the role of violence in Colombian visual culture. The speaker appears on the left in my sketch, seated next to a fellow who (were you to judge from my drawing) might be confused for a smirking Dave Bennett (to those of you who know that luminous philosopher from a certain small college in a northwesterly place). It was not Mr. Bennett, however.


After a pleasant day mostly spent sketching and trying to dust off his Spanish, Old Ken boarded a crowded train back to London. Should you have any interest in the sights on a typical train from Cambridge to London on a typical Friday, I offer you my sketch. So, all in all, a tentative first step toward my dream of insightful, illuminating philosophical communication. But, a step nonetheless. And should you, dear friend, wish to share likewise, please do so.