Zürich night
Photo courtesy of Nic Shepherd
Some 15 minutes after having been abandoned at the Perla Mode by an American living in Zürich, I found him again at another opening at a small exhibition space called Les Complices. He made some comment about how I was typically Canadian because of the desire I expressed (which admittedly had structured my last 5 years) to keep going out rather than back to North America. I had not assigned value to my statement, and in my view it could indeed be taken as a lack of control and capriciousness. The space, which had a DJ playing, was a queer art space. I was not sure if my jocular, drunk brotherness was appreciated, and I was in the mood to joke. Out front one of the drunk women, who turned out to be a Canadian from Montreal, tried to convince her acquaintances to go out to a non-gay place to dance. She appeared to be quite drunk, and unless I was mistaken, the other two were not very fond of her. She had pimples. The other two returned to their friends inside and I was left, so she asked me and I thought, why not, I’d like to go dancing. We walked arm in arm down the street to a place right on Langstrasse. She joked with the bouncer who tried to remain stern, they were obviously familiar with each other, and it made me feel that this was a small town. Inside it was hip hop night, and various large men rocked back and forth in the red velvet surroundings. She knew someone (although they claimed they hadn’t known each other before) and they began talking. She asked me to buy her a drink, but I really had no money on me. This other girl seemed to be looking for someone to go home with. They asked me if I wanted to fuck, said that it was what everyone in the room wants. I joked that I was a virgin and the girl believed me, appeared to take pity on me, which made me uncomfortable – when I retracted the statement she asked me what kind of lover I was. I motioned to some of the large men standing near the turntables “maybe they want to fuck.” She considered this and went to see about it. When the lesbian’s back was also turned I used the opportunity to slip out the front door with my backpack on. I walked home along the vacant street car lines. I kept thinking of the girl’s sad expression when she said she came to the bar quite regularly, but no one had interest in fucking her. It made me kind of sad too.
[courtesy of Michael Eddy, October 2009]
Posted by o | reply »to find and not find the centre of things, all things aside
above: putting up the exhibition (photo by 高灵 Gao Ling); below: walking back after finishing the installation ｜ 上海 shanghai，2009年9月
i am sorry. time is everything.
cannot go there, too much or too little, traveling, hanging there, a collection, hanging on. i seem to have an affinity for stories of people getting lost, perhaps a bit too direct a reference yet were i to introduce myself to you as that one who liked to find this little thing in the street it perhaps would remain too ridiculously nebulous.
direct.
direction.
we would have been looking in the wrong direction to go astray, to find the beside. aside, as in put in reserve, for future use, the collection of objects for which we may find value or function at another time. we never know what will become useful in the end, or the lessons come too late, i feel the top of her head and wonder what positions i layed in as a child, what positions i moved in sleep, next to you or dreaming without you. we cannot always think so functionally, in love and in war. i don’t strategize very well. but we may very well have a hunch.
a hunch is an open space of time, a forethought without expectation, like a collection of random things for which we may find use later. i suppose it could be important to figure out how to make use of them, but perhaps their being together could be enough. find meaning beyond use value, a cabinet of curiousities, our collection of oddities.
that’s the thing i’ve been missing lately. to take time for my collection of oddities, to try to go back to a certain kind of objectivity without expecting too much. i have a hunch. perhaps i was looking in the wrong direction and now find myself lost, a story that i liked to hear, her voice in two languages on loop. it’s my own aside that is now addressed to you, without letting the other characters hear, a story shared without knowing if anyone is listening. you, dear audience member or director, the lights are shining so bright…i cannot see if you are out there.
Posted by 丫 | reply »little fish, big fish, swimming in the water
mapping beijing, one week before, what she didn’t know about, and what he said about ten years later
忘了，忘，会忘的，将会忘
“can intimacy exist in public?”
Secret communities tested in aleatory fashion, Acconci’s limitations are practical, too. Beginning at the site of the Bundesnachrichtendienst and arriving at the Auswaertiges Amt:
The subject was chosen walking past the site of the German Secret Service building (to be finished in 2012). A plywood construction blockade, there is hardly any graffiti here. One stencil of a walking man whose head is a surveillance camera.
[14:06] The subject has been spotted on Chausseestrasse walking south at a medium pace and smoking a cigarette with his right hand.
Getting on the U-bahn, Schwarzkopfstrasse.
Stadtmitte, getting off.
Walking south on Friedrichstrasse, turning left on Krausenstrasse.
[14:16] Subject is noted to always look both ways before crossing the street.
Taking a left and turning into park.
[14:21] Subject missing.
[14:22] Subject 1 has most likely entered building number 40 at Leipzigerstrasse, and subject 2 is picked up at the point of departure, exiting from the building wearing high-heeled boots, blonde hair, carrying a black shopping bag in her right hand. She suddenly turns and walks the other direction. [14:26] Subject number 2 enters a jade coloured BMW 725i. We return to the point of departure of Subject 1. 40 Leipzigerstrasse. [14:28] Subject number 3 exits 40 Leipzigerstrasse. She walks east, wearing a multi-coloured scarf and black hat. Walking at leisurely pace, adjusting her hat.
[14:37] After playing Lotto, subject walks into the adjacent super market.
Blumenkohl, broccoli, kiwi.
[14:50] Subject 3 investigation is terminated in supermarket. Subject 4 recognised at 14:49 walking out of the market, carrying a large bottle of Pepsi.
[14:51] Walked inside Multipolster furniture store a few doors down. Appears to be working there.
[14:53] Subject 5 spotted walking west on Leipzigerstrasse. Subject 3 rediscovered walking west on Leipzigerstrasse. She is carrying groceries in a black nylon bag. Subject 3 investigation re-terminated.
Leipzigerstrasse 43. Subject 6 is spotted buying a small potted plant from the Blumen & Pflanzen shoppe. He wears a beige trenchcoat and red scarf, carrying a white and blue shopping bag and newly purchased flowers. [14:59] Subject meets a couple at the intersection of Leipzigerstrasse and Markgrafenstrasse. They all hold shopping bags and chat for a moment before trying to enter a restaurant door, finding it locked. The go to the next eingang and enter City Hotel.
[15:15] Subject 6 exits hotel accompanied by the same man and woman. He is no longer carrying the flowers and shopping bag. They walk north on Markgrafenstrasse. [15:23] Subject 6, accompanied by the couple, walks into the Auswaertiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office). He is seen removing his trenchcoat before security check. Subject 6 investigation terminated.
After some days, she didn’t feel the need to continue in the same way again, I mean, what is participation anyway, if it’s the same as tearing the sheet, sticking around to feed the birds or clicking——wordlessly——”add friend”. How engaged does one need to be to find intimacy, and what is participation in a group in which nobody notices? Taking part, you took part, again again… but what of inaction in the kinesphere, an allowance of space in regards to an other, not taking the responsibility. What can simply be, we were the worst at imagining a telos, so it just goes here to there nor there, our passivity is incremental. but why keep thinking of community and collectivity with such utopian ideals, anyhow. he asks, “can you imagine any form of positively created collectivity”? I thought of all my ill feeling; now, like a nearing in language or love, linking forward or a re-action may not require positives or negatives…
Posted by 丫 | more »they call it the modern sky
things we say we’ll do and never do | things we do and never speak of again
路路生日快乐…yeh-啦
she said she still wanted to be, and laughed at me when i said becoming
中日文化体育交流年 | china-japan year of culture and sport exchange | 日中文化・スポーツ交流年
minutes. finally. we meet. others. minutes.
beds. dormitory feel. luggage. blanket. dishes. showers? toilets? they’re in a group but also individuals at the same time. artwork and also receivers of info at the same time. receiving more than giving out. selection. simple. profession. location. possible interest in the project. possibility of having an effect on their life. parents? eighteen to sixty. preference of the embassy. people who can determine their will. biggest worry. how to select people. where to get them. met with embassy first. documentary film. sixteen teams all over the country. already six-hundred hours of footage. people also need to answer ninety-nine questions from fake. about germany. the west. fantasy. religion. work through e-mail. make participants start to participate. the first step. already a part of it. even if the visa process may fail. june thirteen. announcement of the artists of documenta twelve. the project is impossible to keep a secret. logistically. not boat-people. boeing-people. usb-stick. memory stick. memory of today. infrastructure hardware. network infrastructure. upload. download. twenty computers. printers. a working office space that people can freely use. create an information landscape. info-booth. usb-stick will contain the memory of one individual. corporate gift. two sticks. one at start. upload. download. use. then at departure take in stick and give a new blank one. keep this memory, this accumulated knowledge. the used one you keep as a trace of this experience. memory of participant and memory of event. a thousand and one different eyes. one may be completely into all the artworks. another may not give a damn. i’ll be a cook. a barber. the teacher. informational storage. where to eat? where to sleep? what to buy? what to visit? most will not speak english or german. need information. mapping. computer technicians? doctor? impose on top of kassel another layer of information. modeled after a map of china. your own city in any city. when it’s gone it’s gone. traces in mind not in physical space. why products. so much stuff. unnecessary. what will be related to the stick? information centre. we want to be active. them to be active. interface architecture. set up a condition. we don’t know what’s going to happen. we provide a possibility. most fascinating thing. usb one GB. one thousand and one GB. a photograph of each? that’s the studio photo! ask people to do it themselves. assuming that most people have a camera. otherwise provide twenty or so cameras. each group roughly two-hundred. on the planes forty here. sixty there. some from beijing. some from shanghai. and insurance. one-thousand yuan per person. plane tickets non-refundable. over twenty people to coordinate the work. will have volunteers in kassel. can probably have computers and technicians. map-office sets up scenario. something personal. emphasize individual. the more unpredictable, unforeseeable elements we put in the better. when i started i didn’t know it was going to be like this. chinese people get very emotional. one girl wrote me that one day she was standing on a traffic overpass and started thinking about the fact that she will partake in this project and that she was so happy it made her cry. she said she never knew she could cry out of happiness.
image edited from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/aiweiwei
more expensive DVDs
today there was a slight gasp to recognise the shop from the photograph she had shown me long ago; hiroyuki-san and she were working on a magazine for them, and i think it must have come out at some point, i think i saw it i am sorry if i don’t remember so well. but i did remember the image of the car coming out of the facade of the building, the plain cardboard brown textured cement type facade that looked like a compound. in real life today, i saw that they were rocks, a wall of rocks with a barbed wire-like fence over them, a bit scary, still looking like a compound. i had not wanted to go into any shops today, except the Saver’s because i needed to buy soap, but after the gasp i decided to go inside. a very nice bookshop. and the you like me book from jan family. right after a-chan had told me about it, maybe a few days ago (刚才？刚才？刚才是几分钟之前！几天不是刚才！！) －－her suggestion for www.janfamily.com. so yes, it does have something to do with this thing we are talking about, as what anyway says, ‘but i want to focus to the communication with people who is in front of us, public (not through the book). then it makes me think about shimabuku. maybe the way i want to work is something like janfamily and shimabuku. that’s what i thought laterly. my idea came up without thinking about them, but their works can be the examples of it…’ yes, so that link, and another, www.thingsthatfall.com, because at this moment we’ll let other people’s work say things for us, so much nicer that way. what is this all about? we try to make a communication, komuni kae shun, and i am also thinking very much about this relationship to commercialism, to product, the space between public good and private belonging, the relationships we have with eachother and the relationships we have with our things. i love everything that you do.
Posted by 丫 | reply »