The quiet 19th century villa standing on a mild hill, ten minutes away from the center of Florence

was stridently quiet compared to the streets of Beirut. The villa had a large garden with olive trees, cats and roosters, as well as many rooms and apartments with wood beams on the ceiling. The setting was natural to the point of becoming theatrical. It was adequate to stage some of the conversations initiated in Beirut, over our neighboring balconies. Removed from the flow of everyday and of Beiruti problem solving practicalities, conversations would start bending towards the unexpected and the imaginary, thus stretching daily communication into a formal exercise at the limits of logic. What to say about gravity, bones and parents? What is it that a conversation really communicates; an idea, an affect, wills, threats, longings? Galileo was sentenced guilty of propagating a Copernican worldview that did not comply with the precepts of the church. He did so in a play titled Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), a fictive conversation , between Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio, that stands as a scientific demonstration. Although there was no worldview to be defended, Setareh and Mirene explored through their conversations the interstices between reason, communication, artistic form, and collaboration.

[M] I expected her to sit in front of me but she picked the seat just next to mine. Her eyes, when our discussion was on the verge of becoming something else, lost focus. They looked straight at me but also beyond, shifting, physically, the rules of our exchange. [S] You start.

StreSSed BaMBooS Resistance is garden life Botanical instruction in a bad mood Still there is pieces of land where we have never set foot There our friend nearly died without telling her mother

[M] I agree that climbing a tree is only defensible if one needs to pick cherries because falling would simply result unthinkable. [S] It is also true that memories can either sink like heavy masses, float on oily surfaces, or levitate like smoke. Their weight does not depend on their physical presence. Rather, they are closer to reminiscences and therefore unstealable.

a long tiMe Since SeldoM Follow the dialogues of birds and sleep dreams of public masturbation in squares separated from a Pompeian garden by a palace She found her favorite area of town I my favorite hour

No weight was lost, no consciousness gained but the joy of an inclement dialogue

[M] Want to eat pasta before you leave? Before I blow-dry my hair on level 2 and go window shopping in pharmacies? Before I start correcting the students papers and suffer from time management, the sickness of light green trees separating peoples homes from humanist landscapes? [S] Want me to correct your papers while you do artwork? A little pasta sounds nice, but I feel I will be late for everything. Strange how little time you have, when you have all the time in the world!

after rohMer Theatrical immediacy Moral dialogue of a soap opera debating loves vicissitudes and their solution to that Hello, nice to meet you, lets go for dinner Yes What do you think about adults? The salmon cardigan curled around the naked chest of a blond man shining like the varnish of a newly invented color Universality is a sculptural and walking ass

Objections And Therefore Caught in the space preceding conviction Resisting the currents of an argument Leaning on a conclusion I will crawl my way out Fall in Want to Towards that Place of reminiscence we know

Moral learning workS BecauSe of a nice Body and a fancy t-Shirt Foucaults sharpness was in his voice. You will sign the partys defunct future Follow me not because of Marx The subjugation of third world nations the mutating bourgeoisie the withdrawal of rights we had acquired through lost friends the neon-like consciousness of institutional violence and its perfected ecology the injustice shielded by devices you thought you could imagine.

[S] Can these thoughts be shared in a conversation or will our exchange inevitably fall back into a monologue of which you, who speak, is also the listener? [M] You know, its this old dilemma that watches over me like a deceased elder brother. I think it is possible to step outside oneself, like in death, but also as the closest thing to animal life. A realm of understanding where the I is not the superstitious eye.

The anatomy of a tear studied by a team of fathers

But above all stupendous inventions, how sublime was the mind of whoever conceived a means of communicating his most private thoughts to any other person, though very distant in time or place; that is, a means of speaking with those who are in India, or those who have not been born yet or will not be born for another thousand or ten thousand years! And how easy it is, by various arrangements of twenty characters on paper! Let this be the seal for all wonderful human inventions and the end of our reasoning today. Now that the hottest hours have passed, I think Salviati would like to go and enjoy some cool air in a boat. I expect both of you tomorrow in order to continue the discussions we have begun, etc.

Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Galileo - On the World Systems, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1997, p. 116.

Writings by Mirene Arsanios Images by Setareh Shahbazi With special thanks to Angelika Stepken and the team of Villa Romana Florence, May 2011