Shattering the Muses

Shattering the Muses, Rainer J. Hanshe's third book, is a hybrid entity constructed of quotes, poetry, short essays, and visual art, including original works created expressly for the book by Italian artist Federico Gori. Fragmentary and elliptic, aphoristic & apothegmatic, Shattering the Muses explores, if not enacts, the eclipsing of the logos and creative force within individuals as well in the spheres of culture & civilization.

Spanning a broad range of history, Shattering the Muses stages the fundamental chiasmic unity of creation and destruction as it occurs in individuals, whether a result of choice, tragic events, and/or social, religious, or political exigencies. It also enumerates the destruction of individual artworks, museums, and the various biblioclasms enacted by numerous cultures from biblical times till today. When do individuals and cultures rise out of catastrophe and destruction, and when do they descend into silence, either temporarily, or (possibly) permanently, and thus remain forever shattered

If language or the creative force is a dwelling place, conversely, when it disintegrates, or is rendered inoperative, or when we as individuals or as a civilization are split from it -- this is the ultimate form of the Unheimlich, an extreme cataclysm out of which there is often no return. Hanshe proposes that "apocalypses" are not eschatological, but ontological, ever-present, continuous events that threaten us. Hope before disaster, creation in the midst of inevitable evaporation. Shattering the Muses is a paean to the book, a work of mourning and of threat, where the fragility of consciousness, of art as a positive power, is an ephemeral but stalwart citadel against barbarism.

Rainer J. Hanshe is a writer. He is the author of two novels, The Acolytes (2010) and The Abdication (2012), and a hybrid text created in collaboration with Federico Gori, Shattering the Muses (2017). His second novel, The Abdication, has been translated into Slovakian (2015), Italian (2016), and Turkish (2017). He is the editor of Richard Foreman's Plays with Films (2013) and Wordsworth's Fragments (2014), and the translator of Baudelaire's My Heart Laid Bare & Other Texts (2017). Hanshe has also written numerous essays on Nietzsche, principally concerning synesthesia, incubation, and agonism. He is the founder of Contra Mundum Press and Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics. Other work of his has appeared in Sinn und Form, Jelenkor, Asymptote, Quarterly Conversation, ChrisMarker.org, Black Sun Lit, and elsewhere. Hanshe is currently working on two novels, Humanimality, and Now, Wonder, and In Praise of Dogs, a photojournalism project with Harald Hutter.

Federico Gori, who was born in Prato in 1977, currently lives and works in Pistoia. After studying painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, he was invited to show his work in Prato's Palazzo del Comune in 2002 in the context of an event entitled Gemine Muse, which was devoted to displaying the work of young artists in the museums of Europe. He was awarded a resident stage in 2003 by the Fondazione "Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri. Hic Terminus Haeret," where he produced a site-specific work for display in the park. The exhibitions in which he has taken part in recent years include: 54^ Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione Accademie, Venezia, 2011; Di fragilità e potenza, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 2013; Talent Prize 2013, where he won the Special Award "Metaenergia," Casa dell'Architettura, Roma, 2013; Come Afferrare il Vento, Museo Palazzo Fabroni Arti Visive Contemporanee, Pistoia, 2015; Colorful, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, Jiangsu P. R. China, 2015; Governare il caso, L'opera nel suo farsi dagli anni sessanta ai nostri giorni, Pinacoteca Comunale di Città di Castello, Perugia, 2015; Rebuilding the Future, Rossana Maiorca Cycle Route, Siracusa, 2015; and Underground #2, Museo Palazzo Fabroni Arti Visive Contemporanee, Pistoia 2016. In 2017, he was an Artist in Residence at La Panaceé, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Montpellier, France, invited by Le Bureau des Arts et Territoires for the European Project The Spur ETACEC 16-18.