there’s an elderly english couple seated to my left. the woman has lost a screw from her sunglasses. it’s now lost in the cobblestones among a thousand other fragments. the english woman is here for an aunt’s funeral. i help her find the screw with no luck. i tell her i live in san francisco and she gets curious. she wants to know what living there is like these days. i challenge her assumptions and she welcomes my perspective.
her husband gets back from the atm. our lunches continue independently. the building facade in front of me is currently being restored. it’s unusually warm and sunny and i don’t need the restaurant’s blanket — though i’ve been in copenhagen for two days and i don’t know what usual is like here. the herring looks fantastic, though.
In the past couple of months, I found myself on many plane and train seats, streets of cities I’d never visited and places that used to be my home.
I felt the relief of being unseen by an anonymous world: unbothered passersby, real people dining next to me.
I scrutinized street fashion, slivers of moon, Scandinavian furniture and wind turbines popping out of water. I felt strangely intimate with my surroundings.
I noticed my tendency to be more open to accessing intimacy whenever there’s a gap between me and what’s in front of me. Walking through some art installations made me feel that gap loudly. It made me ask myself what intimacy even means.
sculpting the senses
[Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses is an exhibition currently at the Brooklyn Museum. It shows more than 140 haute couture creations by the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen (b. 1984), as well as scientific artifacts and natural history specimens. Soundscape is by the Dutch composer Salvador Breed (b. 1984).]
i wish i could touch this dress. it feels ethereal and rigorous. hard but delicate. reminding me of a precise shape, yet abstract. the way contradictions can make something balanced and polarized at the same time. i can see the movement of water — the gown itself reminds me of the crests of a wave.
art chemistry dance. this woman studied classical ballet and took painting lessons before becoming a fashion designer.
pyrocystis lunula algae. caring for the dress requires a symbiotic relationship… the garment is cultivated rather than constructed.
the coral shapes of this dress were hand-sculpted from loosely woven brass wires that were fire-flamed to create opalescent reef motifs… hand-stitched onto a tailored bodice.
are those… bird skulls?
watching all those dresses actually being worn by real people is hypnotizing. you can dance in them also.
how long have we been in this room, watching one runway show after the other? it’s not as if i were here alone, but i don’t feel as guilty as i expected. you want to watch this too and the silence between us is a contemplative kind of one.
has she literally skydived to show the movement of the gown flowing across air?
something missing?
[Something Missing? is an exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, by the French artist Sophie Calle (b. 1953). It consists of seven of the artist’s major series, including The Blind (1986), where Calle asked people who were born blind to describe their image of beauty.]
it happened twice this year, that i heard of someone who was destined to turn blind. then i asked myself how it was, to know the difference between dark and bright. to have visual material to feed your imagination. how different the face of a woman can be just by changing the distance of her eyes from her nose. how much a haircut impacts your overall aesthetic. being able to develop a personal style based on how you perceive yourself in a mirror, not just by how different fabrics appeal to you by their texture.
all of that, before turning blind.
what does beauty even mean for people who were born blind? to decide colors based on a feel.
forest seasons
[FOREST SEASONS is a temporary large-scale installation at DARK MATTER, Berlin, by German light and media artist Christopher Bauder (b. 1973). Chris Kuijten is a Dutch composer and producer whose sound runs throughout this multisensory art experience.]
am i swaying on a swing at the perimeter of an industrial forest?
every season lasts 45 minutes. which season are we in right now?
this looks like a giant, dark conservatory of plants. is that water running.
the choreography of lights is impressive. the lady at the ticket office said that i shouldn’t look at the laser light. now i have this impulse to look at it anyway. i won’t do it.
it’s scorching hot outside. this dark, fake greenhouse is soothing to me.
is that a tree of lamps? so lush.
i want to remember this by taking photos and videos, but i also want to feel the experience now. i think i can do both.
this installation would be nothing without the sound. it would also be nothing without the lights. the inside-out trees. the architecture. the layout. it’s the ensemble.
this is fall season for sure. it’s nature’s last flashes of energy before hibernation. i can almost hear and see the dancing around the fire pit.
a lady has just asked if i was done sitting on the swing. there are at least a dozen other swings. i won't argue. i guess i'll walk across.
A few months ago, a friend of mine shared a Chinese proverb with me:
距离产生美
She translated it as distance creates beauty.
a book
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
What Bachelard calls intimate immensity: the vastness we find inside ourselves when the world is far enough away.