Desiree Dolron's Exaltation Series WITH ACCOMPANYING ESSAY BY NICK HACKWORTH IN SOME/THINGS ISSUE003
VEGETARIAN FESTIVAL / THAILAND 1999 FROM EXALTATION BY DESIREE DOLRON
‘Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.’ / Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
[...]
Anagnorisis describes the moment of tragic recognition when the hero understands and accepts his fate. It is a moment that, in terms of meaning, is strangely alchemical, turning the base metal of inevitable defeat and death into an eternal victory of sorts. For in appropriating disaster the hero proves that, though they are subject to the contingencies of fate, they are also a match for it. The position is one that combines resignation and resistance, submission and overcoming.
The act of making art about, of, or from disaster, excess and tragedy, as Dolron has done, is a form of meta-anagnorisis that allows both creator and viewer to share in an engagement, though safely sublimated at some distance into culture, with inexorable fate and inescapable contingency. To do so is to preserve our sanity in the face of madness, the only place indeed, where our sanity can be forged. In that moment of anagnorisis, the tragic hero may be said to be sane.
/ EXCERPT FROM MENIN AEDIE THEA BY NICK HACKWORTH. THE ENTIRE ESSAY, INSPIRED BY THE CONTROVERSIAL EXALTATION SERIES, IS EXCLUSIVE TO THE 16-PAGE DESIREE DOLRON FEATURE IN THE PRINTED EDITION OF SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE ISSUE003 / FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE.
DESIREE DOLRON / EXALTATION IN SOME/THINGS ISSUE003 FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE