stupidly dozing off in the middle of an empty art gallery, stupidly musing in it, birch, belp, a half lacquered floor. yes and then getting up quickly to hide in the corner of the space where no one can see from outside, from outside it looks like an empty art gallery. better still. dozing off on half shiny, freshly shaven floor, feeling the curve of one’s own back against the hard flatness of floorboard, musing about the emptiness of it, wishing one were empty, as flat as the half shiny, freshly shaven floor. musing about another night, in half dark, ominous red lamp that always makes me think of amsterdam, when she said something about not knowing if it would be better to say or not say, what good could it do? yes, there is nothing to argue, what good could it do? we wish for honesty, feel the crap of nostalgia for when we used to be honest people, longing instead to sink into the flat emptiness of a half lacquered floor…
she was surprised when i told her that i lied to people, couldn’t tell them how long i was staying [other sad conversation: “but you’re a nomad; that’s cool!], when knowing inside most certainly of leaving this place again. [sadness: “but surely you must be accustomed to american life…”] perhaps it’s the cut-off point that is painful, longing for some abstract thing that one is not sure even exists anymore. shame that everyone forgets about you, shame that you wanted everyone to remember you [sadness: “i love this place, these people, so i wouldn’t want you to come here because i know you would just take off after you found something better”] letting it be awkward and … because the suitcase is still there, because it feels bad, still roaming around in a subjective thought. afraid that you will always get tired, will always leave. it was not the intention! you wanted to love everyone and everything always! but it is just not possible!
so, uncertain one on the other side, everyone and everything the day after your birthday party, we collect the leftover pieces of popcorn and wipe up the wine leaking from the bottom of soggy paper cup. i’ll be back soon!
. .LESSON FROM MOTHER: 不可以depend on其他人。世界上就有自己。没那么容易。去外面就知道世界是这样。. .jan rothuizen draws and writes [by way of a and parallel to reena & medhavi, who miss india]: “i asked yang-jun if he is optimistic about the near future of china?optimistic? no, excited is a much better word to describe the present state of china.excitement involves optimism but it is also dizzines and infatuation; if you’re in love you don’t think too much about the future. yes, china is in love and that’s even better than optimism or excitement. so the question is will china still be in love in 2010?”
belief systems. Settling down. Metabolism slowing down. Excitement as a form of caring. Quelling excitement as a longing for stability. A pet as a lesson in unconditional love.
from yokohama to one among 2464439
a slightly more guttural ‘h’ than expected, a sea of darkness, bumping your head on the bathroom wall in the middle of the night, “oh, a cockroach,” the wrong remark, twice, the bump, still there, right forehead, just below the hair line, unable to just holiday, and the slight unease of a continually heated toilet seat, never making the effort to inquire about actually turning it off, and the house, more than you ever imagined, the fifth roll, and dad making a clichéd remark about young people needing to bump their heads, you sit there on the pale lilac carpet leaning against the spotless white wall, legs bent to the side, right side, left side of body against wall, jeans a bit uncomfortably tight in this position, holding the telephone to your right ear, listening to your sister cry on the other end, “don’t tell mum i’m crying.” how do you do it, drawing, a straight line first, the bottom half, then a curvy upper part with a squirt hole, “a big fish”, dad recalls yesterday today, the time there and not here, so they get there early, i get there late, ice cream served in hot baked bread, sweet in the mouth, a bitter after-taste, what were those lights, you still wonder, floating candles on a quaint little stream, but then seen from the airplane window a thousand miles away, impossible, “don’t tell mum i’m crying.” (picture edited from one of LonelyBob on flickr, may change when own film is developed)
“oh…nothing” or “can i borrow your jams?”
to this day, nothing. like a to-do list, for you, upon arrival: “turn on the a/c, watch cable, cook, sleep, take long showers, walk around the neighbourhood, look out of the window, do yoga on the floor, read. see you next week, enjoy the house. love, lucio”.apologies for laughing too much, laughing being a sign of rudeness in many societies or situations, as in when the extremely overweight man sitting diagonally behind her shows extraordinary deftness in suddenly leaning back to ask “can i borrow your jams?” in slightly nasally voice and she responds equally deftly with a smooth pass of basket of assorted flavours of single portion jams. from in front of her, slightly on her right side, wicker basket of assorted flavours of single portion jams, to behind her, on her left, the man places the full wicker basket of assorted flavours of single portion jams next to his own wicker basket, which has only two jams left. at least as realistic as one can manage in memory, quite sur real, it becomes a consistent source of unnecessary laughter amongst the jam passer and her friend, who have deftly managed to translate it into chinese: 我可以借你的jams吗? oh nothing.. from the press release for nothing, now at the schirn kunsthalle frankfurt: “Friedman shows 1,000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997), a sheet of paper stared at by the artist for one thousand hours, which marks an art process beyond the concept of the instantia tion of the stroke of genius or divine inspiration. The work reflects the labors of a persistence leading to nothing. When Friedman is asked if he really took the trouble of staring at the paper for one thousand hours and when he starts speaking about how he made a meditation of it and kept note of his working hours, this is almost too explicit and specific, curtailing the imagination. In the end, the white paper induces a reflection on time, which, however, is almost entirely left to the viewer by the artists. Nothing is only where you don’t see anything.”.
How, may i ask, may one stop seeing? The falafal stand man at 44th and 6th speaks better English than I do. And so does his mother, as she pulls out the fat wad of bills to give me change. chicken on rice. medium? Four dollars.Business is good today. Just behind, the Cotton Club has come to Grace, under a tent, they play jumping jack jive. There’s – mmbgh- -, there’s -st- -ard. I love it when they announce their names after solos, but today their microphones aren’t amped up enough, only chunky mumbling under the music. More black people take chairs up front. more white construction workers with sunglasses and bandannas sit on the ledge at the back. And when did the gypsies come to New York? Three of them each take a section of the square, each holding a sign in their hands telling how many children they have and dire looks on their faces. She has a black handbag creased flat under her arm, as if it came from the box. That old box. She talks to the man with big dreads concealed under bulbous knit cap, an unmoving black fishbowl attached to his shaking head. A stern almost-frown for the dejected, almost-sexy gypsy woman.Grace security arrives. Three gypsy women walk away with slow, almost-sexy lumbering steps under long skirts. Another man says something to the security guard, who watches the women steadfastly to make sure they leave Grace. You feel he is yelling in her ear, he is bent towards her in a yelling sort of way, though you hear but the softest murmur above the big band. You are only a few feet away.To see someone yelling but hear nothing.Behind the giant potted amaryllises, Asian woman takes a photo of Cotton Club. She blocks the path for red-haired fashion associate, who carries in her hands large presentation boards for the upcoming season. Red-haired fashion associate stops abruptly and rolls her eyes until Asian woman notices her and moves aside. The presentation boards move clumsily but quickly into 1114 avenue of the americas, otherwise known as the Grace building. Baudrillard never had it this good. It’s lunch hour.
to speak of being an old woman, for/from 萌 megumi, makes for strange reading, and for Tさま, 一万 thank yous and sorrys
i take from you————-the things we hold in our bodies. she doesn’t quite say it in this way, it was my interpretation of her muzukashi eigo, my muzukashi nihongo, but she wants to know about body————-another time, the girl had given you a survey asking about being the child of divorced parents [personal and inappropriate?]; you talked a lot about the things that remain in the body, even if pain is not often considered or thought about in daily life. but i see now, that they, the things, seep into the minutes, in habits, undercurrents, flow. ————-and a, a thought that maybe that sentence was in reference to me, is that egotistical? of course it is. but i have to be okay, have to maintain some semblance of humour, of composure, of a professional working atmosphere. this is real life, one thinks. and because i just do not know how to deal with those things in my body, the things that seep into the minutes, the undercurrents, the break of the flow. do things get better with age? i just do not know. i am not an obachan yet. but hoping.
北京 北京
i walk in and order take out. a bit of discussion follows as i ask them to mix two dishes together. tiger vegetables and shredded tofu skin. your favourite. i walk out again then walk back in to sit and wait. a head pops up near my face. are you ok? english with an accent: you look confused.———————you walk around campus. you’d never been here at night. your search was fruitless. a passer-by passes by though stops for a second to look you in the eye. you wonder if perhaps you’d met before and give a faint smile then walk on. passer-by walks back towards you and says: it’s as if you give off light.——————–you start to watch a movie but the alcohol, the lack of sleep and the softness of the bed take over so you sleep but sleeping isn’t just sleeping and somehow you get yourself into a similar mess. when you wake up his arm is around you his hand is stroking your body, lips on your face. No.——————–learning. giving up learning to learn more.——————–sometimes her general okay-ness amazes you as just below the surface you knows she’s accelerating on a downward spiral.——————–dancing. you dance seven hours to make up for about six months of next to none. you’re happy when he finally joins you for ten minutes after three hours, shyly moving his hands and feet. the next day he gets the chorus wrong every time.——————–you’re delighted to see london, backs in macks, long blonde hair on the bus, his japanese wife and a ping pong bat.——————–in the taxi that night.——————–you eat a pineapple like never before. the way one would eat an apple without tools. you buy it ready skinned. eat it holding on to the prickly leaves. your mouth remains a sour mess for several hours after.——————–coming from, going to, New York.———————you’re fine, after two days.——————–soil. what more to say.——————–you wish.——————–you’d like to want.——————–enough.——————–extra RAM. that’s what you needed. on a sunday afternoon. you’re in a hurry, don’t want to spend hours negotiating. three nerdy college boys. apple computers. do you sell extra RAM? __GB, ___MB or 256 MB? 256. how much? they giggle. 400. they giggle. any cheaper? they giggle more. 350. more giggles. 320. 320. ok. ok. no more giggles.——————–you love the phenomenon of 爬山。爬山。climbing a mountain. climbing a mountain in china. pinstripe suits, nylon socked feet in high heeled sandals, stairs with railings and p h o t o g r a p h s. you think about filming.——————–walnuts. she changed her mind. walnuts, now her favourite nuts. brazil nuts no more. too oily, too chunky, too filling. walnuts two miniature brains in a hard shell. pure joy. knowing when to stop. she thinks about asking his opinion on walnuts.——————–they left. they left many things. she left. her shampoo for curly hair from her local drugstore. your hair is straight. like strands of uncooked spaghetti (?). you use it. your hair has never felt better.——————–you still wonder if his mother told him to say he was going to go 爬山 tomorrow instead of just saying he would join another kindergarten.——————–you are sick or perhaps not really just ultimately exhausted and have a cold with the potential of turning into flu. and an upset stomach. only your boss knows. you sleep. all day. you haven’t done so in years. finally you get yourself together. it’s 8 pm. contacts. you need new contacts. the ones you wear now are already too old and thinning making you feel worse. your usual store is closed by the time you get there. you venture out to the central shopping street. dazed you walk. tourists. people. stuff. tourists. flyers. tourists. p h o t o g r a p h s. contacts. six months. 198 a box. then hunger. you never eat burgers. you never eat fries. the holiday inn and you and burgers and fries. and ketchup. upon paying the bill you ask for a doggie bag of the complementary bread. he must think you weird. jason.——————–was it you that night. in that brightly lit space. did our eyes meet as he was walking me to the gate.——————–and then you didn’t but you also wanted to tell him that you obsess. spy. always there in the back of your head. someone he may know.——————–you met them. lesbians he said. he told you about them. he had given you their number. you hadn’t called yet. some days later. you think. you recognize that face peeking up from the person hugging it popping up on your screen. you scroll down. there they are. lesbians. captured. you think of sending him the link. decide against it. you’d rather hide it. your waste of time. http://www.blogcn.com/user33/breathnew/index.html——————–wrinkles. they start at the edge of his eyes following along the border of his cheeks. framing his cheeks like a picture frame when he smiles. he sends her a text message when she thinks about this. ——————–never quite clear about somersaults. till now.——————–i’ll invite him to the dorodango picnic.——————–then i discover the inside of the cucumber i’m eating is hollow.———————the coffee lobby. confusion. i get my order. i think. a croissant. mustard. lettuce. no egg. he gets his order. we think. a croissant. mustard. no lettuce. no egg.——————–the tofu skin maker. you wonder if you’ll ever see him again. and if you did, would you say you still thought he was the sexiest man in this country.——————–sex. food. laundry. it says on her list. they went out. she couldn’t find fries. they went home. she was unstoppable. whatever did you eat? he asked as she wouldn’t let him sleep. when she finally did have enough she couldn’t sleep, got up and did all the laundry that had been waiting two weeks.——————–japan. now you get tired of talking about it. heavy. loaded. kindergarten debates.——————–this is my mermaid outfit she said as she was about to walk out the door, yellow 1元 ikea bag in hand.——————–nobody knows. but when everyone’s gone. you sneak into the kitchen and steal a bite. a peanut. a cookie. a date.——————–just climb out the window she says and you do. you choose your boss’s window.——————–later i find out he’s half chinese half swedish. it’s his favourite restaurant. david stenqvist (mba). i say: spot on. that’s my general state of mind.
jan (some say a sorry is all it takes)
wednesday. i meant to post more on wednesday. but i forgot to buy electricity. again. another romantic candle-lit evening for one, making your absence all the more present. jan. we spent a whole day together on wednesday. i was half an hour late and half an hour early. she always amazes me. she is in her mid-sixties and usually works seven days a week, traveling all over china for her job on the weekend. i found out she studied japanese for three years and she recently applied for a job in a small town near sapporo. she’s interested in ainu culture. she says the people she knows in japan are not into art and culture so it is difficult to find people to take her to museums when she is there. she feels japanese are less into their own culture than the chinese. this makes her sad. she took me to hip bellagio restaurant across the street from her house. we shared crispy fried doufu. she has funny hair. it’s shaved at the bottom all the way round and she ties the rest up into a short ponytail on the top of her head. her hair is white with strands of grey. it’s hard to imagine her with different hair. she gets lonely sometimes. she prefers loneliness in china to loneliness in australia. we went to the toy market together. i was her bargain girl. i’m really good when i’m buying for other people. we bought tiny toy cars, a wooden domino choo-choo train, a wooden calendar, a suspension bridge, wooden shoes to practice tying your laces, a horse, a wooden bottle game, a wooden chocolate cake and a wooden strawberry cookie baking set. and i bought london bridge for myself to use in class. when we got back to her house i asked her if i could stay another five minutes to look at the cookie baking set. i love the eggs. they come in a tiny carton of six and you can separate them into an egg white part and an egg yolk part. i forgot. but she mentioned it again. she was teaching ‘i get tired of’ because she says it all the time. and a four-year-old says: “i get tired of japan”.
from [10] You may also have known how the world might be changed
Edouard Glissant once discussed that “the idea of a non-linear time, coexistence of several time zones, would of course allow for a great variety of different contact zones”. Hans Ulrich Obrist quoted him in his introductory notes for the recent Guangzhou Triennial, talking about the multiplicity of the international art scene, in its boom of biennials, triennials, symposia and festivals, as a means for finding new ways to maneuver within the contemporary art dialectic. Mieszko calls it mingling.
I still get upset when I think about the time David passed it back to me, “Oh yeah, Tetsuo told me about it. He said it’s some kind of networking thing or something.” Among words in list of words to be negatively connoted–networking. In the present participle form, it’s 恶心, yuck, like a slimy handshake, knowing all the lines perfectly for your 吹自己牛 nice-to-meet-you-what-do-YOU-do-as-in-what-can-you-do-for-me kind of smirk. But hey, that’s a pretentious attitude refusing to deal with reality, now isn’t it? Could the thousands on myspace, friendster, and my giant stack of 名片 be wrong? Man needs man, even if it’s alien (I finally watched Solaris last night, it’s amazing). Networking implies something discursive, it moves to the level of culture, and, even if it’s superficial, it derives meaning from a discursive history. Would Wittgenstein say “We’ll keep in touch”?In noun form, the network is a giant and heady flag of our, add the sound of horns here, ahem, postmodern age. It is the price of oil and the blood attached to it; it is The Matrix; it is Kevin Bacon; it is MSN Messenger as office internal communication; it is French kids in Clichy-sous-Bois filming themselves with their mobile phones while they burn the streets then sell the footage to television stations. It is all of this, tangled into one incestuous whole. And somehow, it gains a certain objectivity in its vastness, the overwhelming inability to comprehend the, well—too simply stated—largeness. As in Alistair suddenly lying on his back in the middle of the interview, hands folded behind his head, this kind of feeling. But then it’s not objective at all anymore, becoming instead an indulgence in nostalgia for the present, as we are so often apt to do these days, making paintings that look like graphic design and engaging in voyeurism as the highest form of fantasy. Amidst the loss of ability to say anything new, anything of value, let’s document everything. Let’s make an archive because we don’t know exactly what we want, and actually, don’t we want everything?There is no point. And that is not among the list to be negatively connoted. Quite the opposite, I am discovering more and more, no point means finding a shape in the absence of a singular goal. Beijing the 坦大饼 pancake, the cookie or the doughnut—it is an experiment in urban yeast. Anouchka says circles, I say spirals. As in learning new words every day. As in trying to describe it to you better.
Posted by 丫 | reply »中国一年回顾 . china year in review
. flora mobile. 2005/05/03, 20:48:50, Dashanzi.
Am coming back home .is a really good art . Talk to u tomorrow.
. flora mobile. 2005/05/03, 20:56:45, Dashanzi.
What pity SHRIT! You tell me please tomorrow .No drink.
. alison mobile. 2005/05/05, 22:35:27, home, Chaonei beixiaojie.
Girl u already got your hands full with some masterful creations! I just help where i can on the small things! C u sat
. john. 2005/05/08, 14:46:40, home, Chaonei beixiaojie.
Fuck u cunt
. alison mobile. 2005/05/18, 16:02:32, home, Chaonei beixiaojie.
The travel agents number is 8406 5828 i forget her name but its an older woman tell her u are Fang1 Mei3 Ang2 friend
. kai xuan. 2005/06/07, 22:04:16, Bellagio, Chaoyang area.
哈哈！好啊，我请客啊，你来美院有事吗？DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY CHINESE?
. +8613810986673. 2005/09/08, 22:29:33, home, 慧新北里.
何颖雅？哈哈。接到你的信息我马上就想到你那副可爱的样子，讲中国话讲不好，很逗的样子！你好吗？希望能有机会再见到你啊！
. chango. 2005/09/18, 03:47:47, 旧鼓楼大街.
Chicken and the egg.
. 大壮. 2005/09/21, 18:38:50, subway line 1, almost to fuxingmen.
小何，我明天有事请，我就不能和你门去了，咱们改日细聊.
. 王颖. 2005/09/22, 20:45:34, bus 5, north of 景山公园.
一定不要礼拜日，我家上不了望。你跟他商量吧！
. chango. 2005/10/06, 00:28:25, home, 慧新北里
Oh your voice is addictive! Been listening to your recordings. They are meditative.
. anouchka mobi. 2005/10/18, 18:50:55, work, 八宝山.
finally. strings of light floating in the sky. maybe because i like being part of something that is dying. an abrupt stop. the grandest square in the world.
. 雅良. 2005/10/18, 00:25:22, anouchka’s house, 豆瓣胡同.
那个山找到了，我们可以去找，在北京石景山区的妙峰山
. anouchka mobi. 2005/10/23, 13:23:58, walking somewhere, was it 朝内北小街 or 和平离？
practika, which yolk to choose and how to get to the sea… a vision of everyone in my subway carriage simultaneously starting to cry one tear at a time…
. 姬娜. 2005/10/27, 13:03:31, 915 bus, near 东直门.
好呀 真高兴有你的消息 明天若有空 来家里 咱聚聚
. 石头. 2005/11/05, 20:12:23, 南锣鼓巷, 这里cafe.
不过我房间特别乱 你们不要嫌？啊
. 王静. 2005/11/07, 14:24:15, work, 八宝山.
我觉得还是小孩好，开开心心的活着，即便有了烦恼，第二天也会忘记
. anouchka mobi. 2005/11/12, 19:01:31，通州, walking with 崔凯旋.
she was so happy with her mother’s ass couldn’t stop laughing and looked at the moon
. fan yue. 2005/11/19, 18:14:16, 新射界construction yard.
不用谢，我会去的！以后有要帮忙的就给我打点话
. 谢婷婷. 2005/12/08, 09:58:40, number 2 bus, passing 天安门.
小资从来不穿深色的袜子 哈哈你有去门了？
. 10601083441256. 2005/12/08, 17:17:31, work, BCIS, 百子湾南2路77号.
Hi:-)是Sally,义卖还好么？希望一切都好…对不起，颖雅，我没有帮到你什么…无论在个一买的结果怎样，你都尽心了，对 么？
. richard. 2005/12/18, 21:01:06, 愚公移山.
Some routines yes but it wasn’t my choice! I am labelled! I am boring!
. 利youling. 2005/12/24, 21:22:08, supermarket, basement of Kenzo building, 东直门.
Posted by 丫 | reply »恩！每天开心！
|
.
|
rss 2.0 | feedburner | del.icio.us |
|
.
|
this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. |
|
.
|
site by orange 程康 and ourwork.is. |
|
.
|
best viewed with your character encoding set to unicode utf-8. |
