Author: Juan A. Esteban
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The horned visage
In the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome, there is a marble Moses carved by Michelangelo around 1513 that features two small horns on its forehead. Almost everyone has seen them, either in photographs or in person, and almost no one questions why they are there. The answer is one of…
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A single shoe
Since January, Adidas has offered a service called Single Shoe, which allows for the purchase of a single trainer for half the price of the pair. It operates in twenty-three European countries and was designed in consultation with disability organisations. It is a sound initiative, although it arrives late: until now, anyone requiring one trainer paid for two. At the end of…
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Two cans in a bag
At the end of September 2024, a lift engineer entered the LAM museum in Lisse, the Netherlands, to conduct an inspection. He was a replacement and was unfamiliar with the building. On the roof of the lift car, which is made of glass and ascends through a transparent shaft, he discovered two beer cans…
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Tenfold
On 8 April 1982, an Israeli researcher named Dan Shechtman was examining an aluminium and manganese alloy through an electron microscope, which he had rapidly cooled himself. What he observed should not have existed: the diffraction pattern, the imprint left by ordered atoms when struck by a beam of…
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Maman died today
El extranjero, de Albert Camus, empieza con una de las frases más famosas de la literatura del siglo XX: «Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.» Cuatro palabras en francés. Y en ellas, en una sola de ellas, hay un problema de traducción que lleva ochenta años sin cerrarse del todo y que dice más sobre qué es…
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Neither authentic nor false
In the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, there resides a Greek statue that has spent forty years awaiting a verdict that remains elusive. It is a kouros, one of those rigid, naked youths that archaic sculpture replicated towards the sixth century BC, crafted from marble and slightly larger than life-size. The museum acquired it in 1985…
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Four separable components
I state my position at the outset: Kripties has been appointed by Eurosky as a trusted verifier on mu.social for art and culture accounts in Spanish. Eurosky has not reviewed this article and bears no responsibility for my statements, including any criticisms. I write from within; for this reason, I have taken particular care to avoid promoting...
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Burn it all
When Franz Kafka died in 1924, he left two notes for his friend Max Brod: that his diaries, letters, and manuscripts should be burned unread. In his possession, unpublished, Brod held three novels: The Trial, The Castle, and the one we know today as Amerika. He could either obey and strike the match or betray the final request...
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A year of clocking in
On 11 April 1980, Tehching Hsieh, a Taiwanese artist based in New York, installed a time clock in his studio—the type utilised by factories to monitor the arrival and departure of workers. He imposed a strict rule upon himself: to clock in on the hour, every hour, twenty-four hours a day, for a...
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The closed cone
Within the lodgepole pine forests of the Rocky Mountains, certain trees secure their seeds under lock and key for decades. Unlike almost all other pine species, their cones do not open upon maturation; they remain sealed by a hardened resin, year after year, with the living seeds contained within. They may persist in this state for twenty or thirty years,...