Daily Archives: April 27, 2022

Think of her as Peggy Guggenheim in reverse. Laura Mattioli Rossi: an Italian, not an American, living in New York, not Venice, near Canal Street, not the Grand Canal. She established and runs a private foundation in New York, the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), which recalls the private, one-woman Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Since 2013, Mattioli has exhibited Italian art of the Interwar and Postwar period in the SoHo loft building on Broome Street where she also lives. Guggenheim displayed Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists of the same period in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where she lived. The two heiresses, raised by nannies some 50 years apart, also shared lonely childhoods.

Her fathers extensive collection of Italian Futurist art began in 1949, a birth date just before her own, 1950. When the collection was born, I was born, she said last month. The collection was my big, more successful sister famous and more beautiful, and more pleasing to my father.

Over an espresso and chocolates in the large, open kitchen inside the CIMA gallery above her loft, she casually mentions: My mother tried to kill me when I was six months old. She was unstable and thought, after a long postnatal depression, that I caused her suffering.

Until she was 12, hired help protected her from her mothers violent outbursts, as her father, Gianni Mattioli, a successful cotton merchant, traveled for business and escaped emotionally into the sanctuary of his art collection, kept in a second apartment on the Via Senato in Milan. The family apartment was furnished with the antiques and historic paintings that his bourgeois business guests preferred. His daughter considered the collection her good sister filled with good objects: They gave me fewer problems than people.

If Guggenheim, in her winged sunglasses and dangling Calder earrings, was flamboyant, Mattioli dresses quietly, like the academic she is. She wears wire-rimmed glasses, and during a recent visit, her only splash of color was a hand-knit scarf tucked under a cabled burgundy cardigan. With a masters in art and a Ph.D. on the history of collecting, she taught for 15 years, and still has a studious air. When, at 23, she married Giovanni Rossi, an art conservator, she said, I left with only the shirt on my back my parents didnt give me a penny. (Mattioli and Rossi divorced in 2008.)

In 1983, she unexpectedly inherited the collection, which had been promised to an emerging museum in Brera. But the museum was never built, and the Futurist collection, which grew when her father bought another famous collection in 1949, stayed in his ownership. He died in 1977, and her mother, in a surprising deathbed decision, bequeathed the entire collection to her daughter. Mattioli became the bride of the collection.

The collection had a biography of its own. Her father had left high school at 14 to support his penurious mother and work as a delivery boy in a cotton trading company. He found his own way in the 1920s, via Milanese galleries, into an exciting world of avant-garde artists who wanted to change the world. The impoverished aficionado, so malnourished he developed rickets, could afford just a few artworks. Only after ascending in the company did the situation change, especially when he married the daughter of the boss of a competing cotton trading company. The executive knew of his daughters instability and arranged the marriage: It was a deal I couldnt refuse, Gianni Mattioli wrote to his brother. Angela Maria Boneschi adored her tall, handsome, solicitous husband.

According to Laura Mattioli, when her family fled the bombardments in Milan to Lake Maggiore in 1943, her father witnessed Italys first Nazi massacre of Jews, left floating in the lake. Believing art could help make man less of a beast, he resolved to collect art for its civilizing value. (After the massacre, she said her father clandestinely arranged the safe passage for Jews into Switzerland.) He eventually opened his collection to the public on the Via Senato, with its Futurist and Metaphysical paintings, and a wall of Giorgio Morandis. In 1949, he lent many works to the Museum of Modern Arts show, Twentieth Century Italian Art.

My father wanted to tell the story of Italian art in the first half of the century, she said. For me, he set the example of opening his collection to the public and lending it to museums.

Because of export restrictions on art over 50 years old and other legal measures, the Italian Futurist collection cannot leave Italy as a whole or be broken up for sale. (She is allowed by law to export a limited number of works for exhibition.) In 1997, Laura Mattioli succeeded in arranging a long-term loan with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, freeing her to work as an independent scholar and curator.

In one stroke the Mattioli collection made the Peggy Guggenheim Collection the number one museum of Italian Futurism, said Philip Rylands, then the director of the Guggenheim in Venice, and now head of the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Fla.

Her fathers attitudes toward art and money helped shape her own. He had a liberated attitude toward money, and consciously used it for spiritual and cultural needs and the common good, she said. His social empathy came from the stinging poverty of his childhood. As part of its cultural outreach, CIMA funds scholars, mostly foreign, for research sojourns in New York.

For Mattioli, CIMA is a corrective. Italian Modernism had always been seen through a French lens, and her New York shows shed that perspective to better establish avant-garde Italian art as an independent rather than derivative movement. The first was Fortunato Depero, the Futurist artist who had become a father figure for her father, followed by a show on Medardo Rosso, the sculptor and photographer.

Im full of admiration for her campaign to raise the profile of 20th-century Italian art stressing its originality, and to do so with such rigorous scholarship, said Rylands, adding, The Depero and Rosso exhibitions brought attention to artists who generally arent sufficiently understood.

In SoHo, as in Milan, there are two apartments, her own and the tall, open, Minimalist loft gallery. On Fridays and Saturdays, visiting days for the public, guests are welcomed with an espresso, as in a home; scholars guide visitors on Friday tours.

The current show of social realism, Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917, embodies her fathers notion of art with a social message. The face of La Portinaia (The Concierge), a sculpture by Rosso, a contemporary of Rodin, expresses the anguish of protracted poverty. In Il Minatore (The Miner), Ambrogio Alciati painted a Caravaggio-esque deposition from the cross, the body of a miner being mourned by a widow after an accident in the mine. He reinvents chiaroscuro with brisk, wispy, contemporary brush strokes. A haunting, tightly focused portrait, Venditore di Cerini (Match Seller) by Antonio Mancini, depicts a mendicant boy peddling matches, with dashes of paint that John Singer Sargent would have applied to silk, here giving the effect of wistful sadness.

In her own loft downstairs, Mattioli collects the art of her time, like her father (and Peggy Guggenheim). Perfect visual pitch and daring seem to be the legacy she absorbed at home. Two startling sculptures by the New York sculptor Barry X Ball stand ten feet high, one a ghostly distortion of Michelangelos Rondanini Piet, carved in translucent onyx. Two faint and fragile pencil-and-watercolor drawings by Cy Twombly on torn paper hang over the gas-fed fireplace. Six early Morandis from what Mattioli calls his pudding period because of the thickly applied oils line a wall.

The furniture is Italian modern. Two Gio Ponti side tables stand beside the low-slung, midcentury Lady Armchair, in shaggy upholstery, by Marco Zanuso for Cassina. An inlaid Lombard-style desk and dresser from the familys Milan apartment line the entry hall.

Besides her taste and sense of social mission, the legacy she brought from her fathers collection was detachment. Since it was located outside her home, she came to feel the collection was something I could live with, but also without. In 2018, she gave the entire Futurist collection to her younger son, Jacopo Rossi, a Roman Catholic priest. She gave the collection in Switzerland to her other son, Giovannibattista Rossi, an Alpinist who lives there.

I dont know what the future of the Futurist collection could be, she said. But my son has more energy, and he will run it for the third generation.

Under the auspices of the Italian Foreign Ministry, the Futurist collection was sent last year in a diplomatic pouch for exhibition to the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The movement had greatly impacted the Russian Avant-Garde in the early 20th century. The collection returned to Italy just 10 days before the recent start of the war in Ukraine.

Had it still been in Russia after the start, We dont know what would have happened to the collection, she said. It is now headed to Milan on a five-year loan to the Museo del Novecento (Museum of the Twentieth Century), next to the cathedral.

Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917

Through June 18 at the Center for Italian Modern Art, 421 Broome Street, 4th floor, Manhattan. 646-370-3596; italianmodernart.org.

Excerpt from:
Laura Mattioli Is the Peggy Guggenheim of Soho - The New York Times

click to enlarge

Courtesy of the Arab American National Museum

Resembling a cross between a spaceship and an octopus, al-Falaq has 35-foot tentacles that extend throughout the floors of the museum, outfitted with 81 computer screens. Ali describes it as a museum within a museum.

The new art installation at Dearborn's Arab American National Museum, "al-Falaq," defies any easy explanation. Looking like a cross between a spaceship and an octopus, the sculpture's 35-foot tentacles twist across multiple floors of the museum, with computer screens in the place of suction cups. Its glowing "head" is suspended 20 feet above the ground in the museum's atrium.

It really has to be seen to be believed and to be fully understood.

Its creator, Alia Ali, recently gave a tour of the installation which she describes as a "museum within a museum" when it made its debut last month.

Ali was born in 1985 in Yemen to a Yemeni father and a Bosnian mother, both linguists who spoke seven languages between them, she says. In the 1990s, both of her ancestral homelands became ravaged by conflict, and in 1998, her family moved to Hamtramck in metro Detroit, since her grandfather got a job at Chrysler.

"During this time, I remember thinking of this word 'alien,' being an alien, and what does it mean to be have extraterrestrial powers ... of being of two cultures and speaking two languages," Ali says while looking up at her sculpture, adding, "only to later on find out that being an alien in this country legally only meant that I was subhuman."

Ali wound up getting a scholarship to study art and political science at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In 2014, a new civil war broke out in Yemen, and while Ali was studying for her masters in fine arts at the California Institute of Arts, dozens of Yemeni children were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike on Aug. 9, 2018.

Ali says she found herself shaken by the incident, and became transfixed by the conflict.

"After seeing all of this, I started looking at Google," she says. "I became quite obsessed with looking at Google. When you type in 'Yemen,' all I would see [was images] of suffering." But Ali says she was also unable to find out much about Yemen from looking at books, either, since its history was written by colonizers.

"When I started looking at books, I saw that the history wasn't the history that was written by us, because we come from an oral history," she says. "I saw how language was manipulated. I never saw it as a tool. Actually, I saw it as a weapon, how one person can change a story, choose to erase something, or choose to include something else, or choose to interpret."

Those experiences resulted in the launch of what Ali describes as her Yemeni Futurism body of work, which she says is inspired by Afrofuturism, a sci-fi-inspired art movement once described by Detroit-born arts curator Ingrid LaFleur as "a way of imagining possible futures through a Black cultural lens."

"What inspired this was rage, pure rage," Ali says, "to turn something that's toxic to me, toxic to my community, toxic to how we see each other, into something beautiful."

She says with her art, she wants to create a new narrative for Yemeni people.

"If all Yemenis kind of exist in this sort of dystopian present constantly, only to hold onto this beautiful nostalgia of only looking to the past, then therefore the only thing as you're going ... to look forward to is a dystopian future."

She adds, "Don't exist within the narrative that is set for you, because you only exist in a place of position of defending something, you will only be responding to someone else. Start an entirely new narrative completely."

She describes "al-Falaq" as "a monument for Yemenis, first and foremost." She also describes it as a bit of a critique of the Arab American National Museum; despite the fact that people of Yememi ancestry are one of the largest groups in metro Detroit's Arab-American population, the museum had few objects representing Yemen, she says.

Courtesy of the Arab American National Museum

Artist Alia Ali gives a tour of her new installation al-Falaq, which fills the atrium at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.

Ali says the sculpture's shape is inspired by spiders, considered sacred in Islam because they are said to have spun a web over the entrance of a cave where Muhammad was hiding, protecting him from enemies, as well as the elusive glass octopus, a rarely seen creature spotted in the depths of the Arabian Sea.

The outer space theme was also inspired by a 1997 news report that three men from Yemen had sued NASA, arguing that its Pathfinder spacecraft and Sojourner rover were trespassing on the planet that rightfully belonged to them. The ancient Sabaeans, who lived thousands of years ago in modern-day Yemen, worshiped the planets.

"We inherited the planet from our ancestors 3,000 years ago," they told the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Thawri.

The lawsuit was laughed off in the West. "It's a ridiculous claim," CNN reported NASA news chief Brian Welch saying after laughing. "Mars is a planet out in the solar system that is the property of all humanity, not two or three guys in Yemen." CNN ended its brief report with a joke: "There was no word on whether they had paid the appropriate inheritance taxes."

"People mocked and laughed, like, who are these primitive people?" Ali says. "In fact, they're heroes, because what does it mean to not only occupy our land, but now there's also an occupation of our myths and dreams?"

Dont exist within the narrative that is set for you ... Start an entirely new narrative completely.

The sculpture's 81 tablet screens, located across its tentacles, incorporate a number of references from Yemeni pop culture (the late singer Ofra Haza, a Yemenite-Jewish star known as "The Israeli Madonna," is featured) as well as Arabian folklore (including creatures like jinns, or genies, represented by a glitch effect on the screens).

Perhaps controversially, the screens also include images of Yemeni artifacts gleaned from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

"These are objects that still are considered looted," Ali says, saying that they were stolen from Yemen by British colonizers in the 20th century. "So this project also becomes about questioning the military-industrial complex, but also the museum-industrial complex, as it is sort of hand-in-hand with war."

The project was commissioned by the AANM, with support of the Mellon Foundation.

The project involved a large team of artists and fabricators to bring it to life, including an architectural consultant, an electrician, an animator, and an installation team. Installation took four days to complete, Ali says.

It will be on view for two years in the AANM, which reopened in January after being closed to the public for nearly two years due to the pandemic.

Ali says she hopes that the art installation will inspire other Yemeni people the way she has been inspired by her research into Yemeni culture.

"To me, this is a letter from our ancestors to the future," she says. "Because if I can feel 3,000 years ago, then surely we can imagine ourselves 3,000 years from now."

The Arab American National Museum is located at 13624 Michigan Ave., Dearborn; 313-429-2535;arabamericanmuseum.org.

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Continued here:
Yemeni artist Alia Ali forges blasts off with far-out, futuristic installation at the Arab American National Museum - Detroit Metro Times

NASA is still deciding on whether to take a Russian cosmonaut along for the ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station later this year.

During a press conference about Crew-4, this weeks mission to the space station, SpaceNews editor Jeff Foust inquired if a decisionhad been made on whether a cosmonaut would round out the crew of five astronauts, given the tense geopolitical standoff between Russia and much of the rest of the world.

NASAs ISS manager Joel Montalbano replied that the agency will likely have an answer by mid to late June, according to Foust.

Its a pivotal decision, as Crew-5 could mark the first time a Russian cosmonaut travels to the ISS on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon. But whether it will actually happen remains very unclear. Russias invasion of Ukraine has driven a deep wedge between its space agency and the West, with several major deep space missions being put on hold as a direct result.

Roscosmos and NASA have been collaborating on sending astronauts into space since the early 1990s. The first time a Russian cosmonaut traveled on board NASAs Space Shuttle was in 1994, as part of the Shuttle-Mir program, which was designed to enable longer stays on board the Mir, Russias space station.

The last time a Russian cosmonaut flew to the ISS onboard an American spacecraft was the STS-113 Space Shuttle mission to the ISS in 2002, almost two decades ago and less than a year prior to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Since ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011 after 135 missions spanning three decades, NASA had to rely almost exclusively on Russias Soyuz spacecraft to populate the US segment of the orbital outpost.

But thanks to its collaboration with SpaceX, NASA has established a reliable new way to do just that: the companys Crew Dragon, which has delivered astronauts to the ISS on four occasions so far.

Last year, the head RoscosmosDmitry Rogozinadmitted that SpaceX has already acquired enough experience for us to be able to put our cosmonauts on Crew Dragon, at an October press conference.

I believe we will be in a position to discuss candidates who may be flying to the space station on board the Crew Dragon Russian cosmonauts, and American astronauts who will be flying to the space station on Russian spacecraft, he added.

But his tone has changed considerably on several of occasions since then. The considerable sanctions aimed at Roscosmos over the Ukraine invasion enraged the outspoken space chief, even spurring him to seemingly threaten the US with a plummeting space station.

Where that leaves plans to send a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS on board a Crew Dragon remains to be seen. Despite the international mudflinging, ISS operations have remained largely unaffected by the crisis unfolding back on the ground, according to both NASA and Roscosmos.

Whether that means the two space agencies seat barter agreement is also unaffected is very much unclear at this point.

Ongoing ISS operations are one of the few remaining tethers that tie Russia to its former allies in the West,with decades of peaceful cooperation in space on the line.

But Montalbano is optimistic, anticipating that Russia will approve the seat barter agreement based on discussions with Russian counterparts, who are supportive of crew swaps, according to Foust.

More on the ISS: Russia Is About to Activate a Robot Arm on the Exterior of the Space Station

See more here:
NASA Deciding Whether Russian Cosmonaut Is Allowed on SpaceX Launch - Futurism

New documents have exposed a bizarre and futuristic array of tech explored by a shadowy US governmentunit.

The ideas were investigated by the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP).

The unit was funded by theDefense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and reportedly has roots in UFO research.

The Pentagon claims the AAWSAP has been shut downbut has provided little detail on its work until now.

The new revelations emerged from almost 1,600 pages of reports, contracts, presentations, briefings, and memos that the DIA released to Motherboard. They show that the program wasnt only interested in UFOs.

Motherboard has kindly shared the tranche of documents which gave us a chance to dig into the most outlandish projects.

In a 2009 document sent to the then-deputy secretary of defense, the DIA praised a report on invisibility cloaks:

Overall, this is a nice qualitative description of the rapidly moving field of invisibility and cloaking and can serve as a good starting point for someone interested in diving into the details of this new technology.

The report describes a cloaking devicethat hides both an object and the act of hiding itself:

Perfect cloaking devices are impossible because they require materials where the speed of light approaches infinity. Imperfect cloaking devices could be made. Such devices would implement suitable curved-space geometries.

The report predicts that making such a tool will rely more on theoretical research than on advances in new materials. Yet the biggest barrier envisioned isnt tech its imagination.

Stargates are already popular in science-fiction. The programhad designs on making them a reality.

The theoretical devices would provide a path through wormholes that connect universes, dimensions, and times.

A 2010 AAWSAP report imagines space travelers using wormhole-stargates near the Earths surface, in Earths orbit or anywhere else in the solar system. They would then pass through the stargate and come out the other side in remote spacetime within seconds, moving through the wormhole throat at speeds of 30 mph! and with no time dilation effects.

The explorers could travel through the stargates in small scout ships, which wouldnt need vast propellant mass ratios or extensive life support provisions.

Explorers could spend all day investigating the remote spacetime location and then return home through the stargate in time to have dinner with their families, the document anticipates. If explorers were to really push the envelope, they would design their stargate so they could return from their voyage in time to wave goodbye as as they see themselves depart on their journey.

The report says that designing a stargate from wormhole physics is a straightforward exercise and that it is very easy to build a time machine, given a traversable wormhole.

Unfortunately, time travel via wormhole was beyond the scope of this paper, the authors add forlornly.

Its often said that we know more about the moon than the seafloors of Earth yet weve barely scratched the surface of our nearest neighbor in space.

One of the AASWP projects aimed to dig a little deeper.

A 2010 document proposes reaching the moons center through a novel technique: nuclear explosions.

This would create a tunnel to the moons gravitational potential well, which could provide negative masses to create a propulsion system without limits.

Making a tunnel through the moon, provided there is a good supply of negative mass, could revolutionize interstellar space flight, wrote the reports author. A sequence of thermonuclear shape charges would be required to make such a tunnel technically feasible.

The document predicts that the number of thermonuclear explosives required would be quite reasonable, and certainly much less than the number of required fission explosives.

After the nuclear explosions crush the lunar rocks and the heat is removed, the tunnel wall would be made from ceramic material, as the water needed for concrete would be in short supply.

These ideas may be intriguing, but the AAWSAPs apparent failure to produce real systems suggests the program was a waste of money.

At least, thats how it appears to us civilians on Earth. But if the results are hiding under invisibility cloaks, in lunar tunnels, or down traversable wormholes, wed be none the wiser.

Read more from the original source:
Stargates, invisibility cloaks, and nuking the moon: The US military's wildest tech research - The Next Web

The latest couple sharing their love story on season nine of 90 Day Fiance is Jibri and Miona. During the 17 April episode, Jibri introduced us to himself as well as his futuristic band, Black Serbs, a new age, space-punk band.

Reality Titbit has all the details on the band as well as their roots, origin, influence and where to find them on Instagram. Check it out.

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In the episode, the 28-year-old musician told audiences of his position as the frontman in the futuristic, punk, hip hop and house band the Black Serbs. Jibri explained their band as:

Black Serbs is a wild group of young, hungry artists. We create space punk music, which is punk rock mixed with electronic hip-hop.

The group is made up of three guys and one girl, Brandi, who is the frontwoman and vocalist of the group. Aside from the Black Serbs, Jibri also explained that he has been making a lot more solo music lately and has been focussing on himself also as an individual artist.

During the episode, he also spoke about the background of the band as well as how it came about and where it originated from. Jibri said how the band wouldnt exist if it wasnt for meeting his high school best friend, he explained:

There would have never been the Black Serbs if I hadnt have met my high school best friend and bandmate, Daveed. Hes a refugee from Serbia, and it really had a huge impact on me when Daveed took me there for the first time. It was life-changing.

Jibri has a deep connection and love for Serbia as a country as well as its rich culture and its people. He has been there over ten times now and to make it even more wholesome, its also where he met his fiance, Miona. He met her whilst he was on tour in the country with his band.

The popular and upcoming band have over 21K followers on Instagram and you can find them under the handle, @blackserbs.

Their feed consists of footage of their live performances, music videos and behind the scenes footage of the band. Their bio states that Jibri is the frontman, on vocals is Daveed Dacho, the frontwoman of the band is Brandi and on guitar and production is Spacecashmusic.

The band have already released a lot of successful music such as their debut album, Space Punk, in 2019. They also released one of their best songs so far, Elevate Your Love, during the same year.

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Niamh is a multi-faceted journalist with speciality interests in entertainment, lifestyle and culture. She recently graduated from the University of South Wales with a degree in Journalism and enjoys writing features, reviews and trending news stories.

Read more here:
90 Day Fiance's Jibri is the frontman of a futuristic punk band - Reality Titbit - Celebrity TV News

"Phobos is doomed."Death Spiral

Ever seen a Moon doomed to crash and burn into the Martian surface create a solar eclipse? Now you have.

NASAs Perseverance rover captured and posted a video this week that shows Phobos, one of two Martian satellites that NASA describes as being distinctly potato-shaped, as it crossed the Suns surface. In a press release, the space agency said the clip will help scientists better understand the moons orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface.

Scientists already know that Phobos is doomed, NASA said in the statement. [Its] getting closer to the Martian surface and is destined to crash into the planet in tens of millions of years. But eclipse observations from the surface of Mars over the last two decades have also allowed scientists to refine their understanding of Phobos slow death spiral.

The good news is Phobos inevitable demise shouldnt happen anytime soon, which means NASAs plans to land humans on the Martian surface are still on the table. The same presser said Perseverance is currently studying astrobiology and searching for signs of life on the Red Planet as it paves the way for human missions to touch down.

All of this work should support Artemis, NASAs mission that should eventually land the first woman and person of color on Earths own Moon. Although rocket tests have been less than perfect lately, the goal is to use lessons learned from returning to our lunar surface to catapult over to Mars.

If we make it there, itd be cool to keep the Perseverance rover around as a memorial to our accomplishments. Perhaps it could even witness the eventual demise of Phobos millennia after this weeks eclipse.

More on returning to the Moon: NASA Contractor Unveils First US Lunar Lander Since Apollo Missions

The rest is here:
NASA Says One of Mars' Moons Is Going to Crash Into Its Surface - Futurism

As a futurist, there is often a sense that somewherein my office, or maybe in my computer bagthere sits a magic crystal ball that can reveal what the future holds. Sadly, 1-800-Cleo doesn't live here. However, one of the key trends I have been watching as of late has to do with the increasing reliance that people from all walks of life have with the world of astrology. Corporate executives and baristas alike speak of their favorite apps or astrologist as they might have referred to a personal trainer in the pre-pandemic age of old. And it makes a sort of sense. With daily life so radically altered and maddingly unclear, clarity and guidance are at a premium. Having a savvy soothsayer one tap away sounds pretty damn comforting.

Throughout time, astrology has been a place people turn to when things stop making sense. From famines to plagues, misfortunes to monsoons, humans have often looked to the stars for some deeper explanation. The art of divination, after all, is the school of interpreting the greater plan of the universe, to believe in a larger meaning behind the messiness that is human life. From red skies and black cats to Mercury in retrograde, we have cobbled together a mystical Morse code to help us navigate troubled waters and troubled times. It should be of little surprise, then, that interest in astrology right now is at an all-time high. Despite the blistering pace of scientific and technological developments, we are seeing an equal surge in a swim toward mysticism, arcana, and of course, the stars.

Counterintuitive? Not really. Attention to the occult coincides with times of challenges. The first astrology column appeared in a U.S. newspaper in the early 1930s following the stock-market crash. Big spikes in interest occurred during the World Wars and soared to new heights during the tensions of the Vietnam War and the Summer of Love. It seems that when man-made hierarchies and institutions fail us, we put our hopes in some ethereal source, a mystical plan that can explain life's erratic and challenging events.

That plan might just include the recent pop phenomenon knowns as "Return of Saturn." Consider this newcomer the modern-day astrological equivalent to the previous media IT girl: "Mercury in Retrograde." Like that catchphrase, it serves as a bit of an astrological umbrella, sheltering us from the feeling that life right now is wildly out of our control. What does it mean, exactly? Saturn return periods are known as the coming-of-age planetary transits that peak during people's late twenties and fifties, shaking up the very foundations of their lives. It takes this powerful planet roughly 28 years or so to make its way through the solar system, coinciding with the quarterlife and midlife crises we have all come to at least pay lip service to, if not experience personally. For many, these moments tend to be periods of deep questions, and a probing of life's purpose. They are infamous for making people feeling rocky, ungrounded, and confused AF. Sound familiar? Sounds like 2022.

The current thinking being bandied about in Astrologica-land suggests that perhaps, along with a pandemic and an increasingly polemic political environment, we are also participating in a massive group astrological reset. A collective "return of Saturn." Certainly, we are deep in a time when both younger and older workers are asking the bigger questions about their purpose and their legacy. Across industries and lifestyles, younger millennials and boomers are challenging the structures that have dictated the behavior of generations past and hitting pause. Recent life events (cough, pandemic, cough) may have put this thinking into motion, but how comforting might it be to know that so much of what is happening right now is actually a pre-ordained moment in our astrological lives? Astrology might well be booming right now because it offers a story line that explains our current confusion and unrest. Maybe it's not us who are unmoored and flailing, maybe it's actually written in the stars. This construct gives us something bigger to lean into, and grounds us in a common experience that provides comfort and perspective. It gives us community. It gives us hope.

So, I for one am happy to welcome Return of Saturn to our vox populi. In a world in dire need of a cosmic reset, pointing to a planet spinning 950 million miles away sounds, well, heavenly. And it frees all of us to dream bigger and imagine better. The stars can take care of today.

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Return of Saturn: Was the Great Resignation Written in the Stars? - Muse by Clio