Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

#240

They did this very nicely in Amiens, where they use projectors to beam the historical polychromy onto the church at night without erasing 600 years of white-church fashion. That’s from the outside though.

I can recommend anybody in the neighbourhood of Amiens to go watch it. It’s a bit pompous (like all french ‘spectácles de son et lumière’) but it will give you a very nice idea of what the church must have looked like when it was new. (Like a colorful asian temple, that’s what it looked like to me)

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#241

I couldn’t have agreed with you more. If it had been any other church structure.

And it is insidious how religious art and architecture normalize theism and the outrages of, in this case, the Catholic church.

However, even as a strong atheist, I nevertheless have to acknowledge the enormous beauty and cultural treasure that is the Notre Dame de Paris. In the same way I would acknowledge the Pyramids of Giza.

Advocating for the repair of Notre Dame does not imply I endorse Christianity/The Catholic Church, in the same way that advocating for the maintenance of the Pyramids of Giza does not advocate for the worship of Osiris, nor normalize any offenses of Pharoah Khufu. And, sure, it would be appropriate that the Vatican open its own coffers and direct some of that gold towards what is ostensibly “their” Notre Dame.

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#242
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#243
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#244

Saw that upthread! What are the odds?? Fortunately, the fire at Al-Aqsa was small and quickly put out. (In case you’re wondering why it got very little coverage.)

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#245

So archeologists?

There are experts by the way. Most large cathedrals in Europe have an office of Cathedral master builder / builders hut. The workshops of Colognes Dombauhütte/Builders hut has over 80 craftsmen - stonemasons, smiths, glaziers, glas restorers, gold/silversmiths, carpenters - to maintain the cathedral.

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#246
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#247

Nice visualization piece from the creative staff at NYTimes:

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#248

image
image.jpg976×549 182 KB

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#249

The meme the racists are particularly delighted by is: finding recent photographs of brown people who are smiling/smirking, among horrified white people observing the fire. These (out-of-context) shots of course “prove” culpability.

What’s significant is: they know they’re lying, they know they’re egging each other on, upping each other’s claims and level of outrage.

But at some point, the pretext becomes the text. At some point, it’s a “fact” that there was a muslim arsonist and all muslims in the crowd are celebrating the act.

Im not saying “We are in Nazi Germany 1938.” But I’m learning more and more what the dynamics of hatred must have been like in Nazi Germany in 1938.

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#250

850+ years without a major fire is a pretty darn good track record if you ask me.

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#251




Joe Mallory, Vice President of the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP, said he too sees the disparity Dennard pointed out.
“This is not the first time this has happened with black churches, where people set fires to them,” Mallory said. “There is not an outcry. It’s sad, but it’s the reality of this country what people value.”
Mallory said it was as true of local icons as with international ones like Notre Dame.
“Look at Music Hall or Union Terminal, the landmarks people value,” Mallory said. “They will leave no stone unturned to improve them and make it better. If something happened to Music Hall, I guarantee they would rebuild it. Clearly, there is not a lot of value placed on black life; there’s no investment in trying to uplift the black community.”

This a simple hypothesis;

What white people value is strongly influenced by white supremacy.

White collective action is driven by white values.

The money raised to rebuild Notre Dame in one fucking day would have been enough to repair water service to 100k mostly black folks in Flint.

The message is clear- white people prefer white cultural objects over black lives.

How can we move to a place where black lives truly matter when white people are too fucking uptight to even consider how we might value our things over their lives?

Now, when I originally posted in this thread, I was fully aware that I might be, erm, ruffling some feathers. Obviously, I’m okay with that.

But I would ask of anyone, read through the responses to councilor Dennard’s tweets on the matter. See what happens when a black woman with a strong voice stands up and speaks truth on how black lives and culture are sidelined by white interests- bear witness to the venom and obliviousness directed at her merely for making a point.

Then get back to me.

Calling out white supremacy =/= bigotry against whites.

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#252

That sounds like a neat idea. I guess that with Augmented Reality Goggles, it would be possible to wind back the clock on all sorts of historical landmarks; like Hardian’s Wall, or the Berlin Wall, even.

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#253

Her citations of Christopher Wren intrigue me. As Maltide Mateo notes

All this does not explain, however, why Wren resorted to the buildings of the Holy Land instead of the Spanish ones, or why he connected the Crusades with this problem. His choice becomes even more puzzling when one gets a closer look at his own argument, for Wren did not see many formal similarities between the Saracen and the Gothic buildings. Although he mentioned that both styles employed the pointed arch, his description of both set them clearly apart. In his opinion, the main features of the Saracen Style were the use of the central round plan and the cupola, whereas the Gothic was characterized by its striving for height, and its use of pinnacles and visible buttresses. Wren’s disregard for the formal issues should not surprise us. Although he knew what Gothic buildings looked like, their formal characteristics had not yet been determined. Nor was much known about the appearance of the buildings of the Holy Land. Wren never visited the Levant, and his knowledge was limited to some verbal accounts from travelers, vague descriptions in travel books, and a few prints which sometimes were very imprecise.7 The idea that Wren’s theory might have been deduced from empirical examination of both styles should, therefore, be ruled out. His theory was rather an a priori formulation, based on contemporary cliches about the cultural superiority of the East during the Middle Ages, as well as on some other ideas that were circulating in masonic circles about the Crusaders and the origin of this secret society.

Mateo’s chief interest is the spanish gothic-- an architectural tradition that has been marginalized by english, german, italian, and french architectural historians.

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#254

A more technologically advanced take on the acetate overlay.

20478-fc-a.jpg836×600

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#256

Surprisingly high, apparently! We had a 120-year old parsonage in Kempele burn down yesterday. Which obviously is a much smaller deal than the Notre Dame fire, or the potential for damage at Al-Aqsa, but it’s a historically valuable religious building going up in flames. Coincidences like this are much more common than people tend to think.

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#257

Good distinction, I admit :slight_smile:

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#258

Excellent point, and in fact they did use water from the Seine to extinguish the fire.

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#259

You lost me.

If you mean one precludes the other, of course not.

However, the underemphasis on one has repercussions that underemphasis of the wouldn’t have.

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#260

I love those!

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