Blog / April, 18, 2023

Venus in Gemini

April 11th - May 7th, 2023

We have a wild few weeks upon us: an Aries solar eclipse tomorrow, Mercury in Taurus goes retrograde on Friday, a lunar eclipse in Taurus on May 5th, and it feels like spring has intensely sprung. It’s all getting scattered about and some of us are bound to be feeling energized and some of us anxious, but I think the ethos of Venus in Gemini is a good ride to hitch, one that will carry us through.

You might’ve noticed by now that every time Venus changes into its next sign it switches out what gets put on display, picking up materials the previous sign did not. Venus in Taurus is all about tangible beauty–the color, the form, the texture of nature and a carefully crafted object. Venus in Gemini, on the other hand, is all about people and our ideas, conventionally beautiful or not. It is less about the technique as it is about developing a language. Playful, androgynous, metallic concepts flipped inside out. This placement embraces the chaos of how we relate to the different parts of ourselves, others, the world—how we eat, talk, write, watch tv, panic; how our narratives split (twins) and come back together. An expert observer of the human experience and a lightning-speed synthesizer of all the information that comes through. What results is a kinetic, effervescent story that shines in its tiny, unorthodox details.

These are twisted kids. They make mischievous, light-on-your toes, unpredictable choices in how they entertain us. They give new names to things we thought we already knew. An ADD synapse festival of I-can’t-make-a-decision-just-put-all-the-ideas-in. Yet it’s this transparently coy, unfussy, high-on-sugar style that makes Venus in Gemini inherently modern. Not everyone can, or wants to, keep up, but I urge you to try. When you stop trying to figure out what you don’t know, you die inside, become old in the worst way. Curiosity is the torch Gemini carries through a 100 different lives.

Curiosity is living!

Nam June Paik - on how his approach to video is similar to John Cage’s approach to music in that neither take their medium too seriously. Cage had a Gemini Moon, Saturn, and Midheaven, as well as a Virgo Sun, Rising, and Venus. Virgo is the only other sign besides Gemini that is ruled by Mercury.

**James Turrell, *Double Vision*, 2013**

**Albrecht Dürer, *Two Livonian Women*, 1521**

**David Hockney, *Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott*, 1968–69**

**David Hockney, *Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),* 1972**

**Jane Campion, *Bright Star*, 2009 (top), and *The Power of the Dog*, 2021 (bottom)**

**Ingmar Bergman, *Fanny and Alexander*, 1982**

**Wong Kar-Wai, *Fallen Angels,* 1995 (top), and *Chungking Express,* 1994 (bottom)**

Giorgio Armani, on Richard Gerein *American Gigilo*, 1980 and on Julia Roberts at the 1990 Golden Globes. Armani is known for using conventionally“men’s” fabrics for women’s suits and “women’s” fabric for men’s suits.

Isadora Duncan. Duncan and her company of “Isadorables” had their own language of a series of dance moves modeled after the poses of Greco-Roman statues.

Pina Bausch, The NELKEN line, 1982 (this clip is from Wim Wenders 2011 film Pina). This dance signs out the seasons: spring-short grass; summer-tall grass & big sun; autumn-falling leaves; winter- brrrrr.