” The life of civilized peoples in pre – Columbian America is a source of wonder to us, not only in its discovery and instantaneous disappearance, but also because of its bloody eccentricity, surley the most extreme ever concieved by an aberrant mind. Continious crime comitted in broad daylight for the mere satisfaction of deified nightmares, terrifying phantasmas, priests’ cannibalistic meals, ceremonial corpses, and streams of blood evoke not so much the historical adventure, but rather the blinding debauches described by the illustrious Marquis de Sade.”
‘This observation applies, it is true, mostly to Mexico. It may be that Peru represents a singular mirage, an incandescence of solar gold, a gleam, a troubling burst of wealth, but this does not correspond to reality. Cuzco, the capital of the Inca empire, lay on plateau, at the foot of a sort of fortified acropolis. The city was massive, of a heavy grandeur. Tall, tached houses, built in squares, of enormous rocks, with no exterior windows, no ornamentation, gave to the streets a somewhat dreary, sordid look. The architecture of the temples which looked down upon the roofs was equally bare; only the pediment was wholly covered with plaque of beaten gold. To this gold we must add the brilliantly colored fabrics which clothed the rich and elegant, but nothing could quite dispel the impression of wild seediness and, above all, of deadly uniformity.”
Georges Bataille, October
Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzche, Un- Knowing
Photography: Luna Jovanović
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