the text and images below are posted from beijing, berlin, buenos aires, hong kong, los angeles, new york, sado island, shanghai, tokyo and zürich. there are a few of us, and this is the space in between.

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the heart is also a muscle

six visas and ten airports later. your life an extended non-place, where did the summer go?

the fear of atrophy.

you return after almost three months and find someone had picked up all the chestnuts again and placed them one by one on the brick ledge in the courtyard, like that autumn four years ago (“are the questions answers?”). the closest you could now get to a feeling of home.

nostalgia.

you’ve been writing that letter that you never want to end. when that letter ends, everything ends.

Posted by f | reply »


“of things to come…”

…pending titles. of course. in the silence of the night. to keep this thing alive, somewhat. to change the fact that we are still celebrating new years on the twenty-second. submitted today by yu. or you. or yu you. you. with things drafted: “sometimes i do look. with mixed feelings. and slight guilt within action.” – yes: “you wanted a hit.” – right now: about 208 results (0.15 seconds). it seems you are doing well. so we drop it. for a few seconds. yes. always. obscure clearly. all this noise… we continue. no bento today. “It was the same,” said Bailey, stubbornly, knowing in his heart that it wasn’t. “And it won’t take us long to be able to leave. If I could get permission to go to Aurora, we could get this act off the ground.” yes we could. – oh, and of hits gone:

Posted by a | reply »


sunday

walking around a new city on a sunday morning, thinking about cakes and the lives you will never live. getting lost. it’s raining and the sloping roof of the opera house makes you miss architecture. a scone with fruits and nuts, the king riding by.

Posted by f | more »


home

Berlin
yesterday i felt like i’ve never been here, today like i’ve never been there.

Posted by daniel | more »


he had definitely found it….

…see more here

Posted by joe | reply »


through the words a little daylight still passed

Posted by f | reply »


metapresence

andingmen_nei_guonian

when i returned to Beijing after approximately one month away, i played the game, as always, of walking around the neighbourhood to see which places have disappeared in my absence, which new businesses or grand ambitions have moved in to replace the failing or derelict, a sort of remapping one’s estrangement within the city. i walked from xiaojingchang hutong to the northern end of andingmen nei, and with hands in pockets passed by a candy bar vendor (new), a book-laden cart full of pirated publications on technology/software (old), and a cardboard box stand topped with rows of socks (old). i walked into the andingmen hotel, where i end up sleeping for several nights, a new tourist in a now familiar city. there was a small exhibition and series of events happening in two of the rooms of the hotel, and it became a quiet but social place to welcome myself back into a place of growing certainty; this was a place delicately juxtaposed with all the awkwardness and adamance that one can have about one’s sense of place in the world. it was called “also space“. during these few days, there was a certain amount of presence, self-consciously experienced and toyed with, a space and socius to make one acutely aware of all the small details of showing and not knowing.

alsospace_221

each morning i would wake from the hardish hotel bed in room 221, happy for warmth but tired for tiredness, enter the bathroom and begin to rearrange the selection of hotel offerings, as are commonly found in many temporary lodgings: two plastic wrapped soaps——packaged again in a printed cardboard box——three toothbrushes, two plastic combs with the hotel name in gold-coloured print. I took away one of the toothbrushes and replaced it with a toothbrush in similar packaging from another hotel. I added a plastic wrapped disposable razor labeled, “one to one”, not knowing which hotel i may have taken it from. another time and another space. a sewing kit from yet another hotel, travel-sized toothpaste from germany, travel-sized moisturizing lotion from hong kong. over the course of these few days, some of the items disappeared or were refilled by the service personnel, the blue towels were replenished with white ones. i thought about the possibility of being absolutely present in a place which one can deem home and not home at the same time. when the maid did not make the bed, i did it for her. but i left one of my hairs on the pillowcase along with a dried mandarin peel, and i wondered if any of our guests would notice and ask, “is this an artwork, too?” it’s a funny game to play, to observe everything in an unexpected place as possibly “art”. perhaps not so different from a game of trying to notice all the places that have disappeared or been born in one’s absence.

alsospace_bath

there was a certain consciousness of presence that i attempted to maintain in these days, living in a hotel in my “home” city. i commuted back and forth to my flat to change clothing, deliberately sprayed on too much perfume. i tried to pay attention to artworks, but fell asleep; a conversation would float past and i would suddenly remember something else that i was supposed to do. and only after a few treks between xiaojingchang and the northern end of andingmen nei did i notice the disappearance of the 24 hour Quick convenience store (old) and insertion of Bee’s cafe (new). Workers move on and on. Presence is a just-fading, a recognition of small distractions.

If we had not noticed the miniscule details of change, development and/or the passing of time around us, would we have missed a minor referencing of the present, a consciousness of our own time away from now, self-reference, a meta-presencing? Present that cannot exist, like a young architect asking questions in the form of statements about scale, he discovers his talk is not there——μετά as “after” or “beyond”, as “with”, “adjacent” and “self”.

Posted by 丫 | more »


mrs. jeanne dielman, objecthood, health and routine sadness

watchingJeanneDielman

leaning towards, leaning on, attachments.

laying

靠!to be close to.

Posted by 丫 | reply »