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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please meet here and now

An Appointment
Alexanderplatz, Tuesday, 27 January 2009, 18.00

ling_alax001[photo by 高灵 Gao Ling]

This is your latest minute notice to our meeting and appointment. Please come to Alexanderplatz station, the platform of the U8 line, between Le Crobag bakery and the Presse + Buch shoppe. Apologies for having been so late all the time lately, does 18.00 sound like a weak quantification of all the things i haven’t caught up to yet?

Please meet me, even if we don’t know one other. No one knows each other here, so let’s just try to remember that fact of all that we know we don’t know, that feeling that you next to me may have noticed it, too.

Mostly we’re ignorant. But I wanted to meet you anyway, an appointment in and of itself as a time and place predetermined. A context embedded into itself, choking, documented. Itself, itself, itself.

And a broad, come with—-first-time everything…

——–
An Appointment is part of the continuing PUBLIC research project by Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga. Organized as a daily series of experiments, interventions and discourses, PUBLIC aims to examine the potentiality of latency and open spaces made possible in the relations between individuals and publics. Other activities are posted here. Some are open invitations to all, others are unannounced insertions in different locations throughout Berlin. 22 January – 1 February 2009.

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two thousand and nine, we try more, we try better

we step out of the house [10] just before midnight, funny [9] noise as we run down the [8] stairs, wanting to be there [7] just in time for the [6] new year, many people on the [5] street, what time, what year [4] is it now in japan, in greece [3], in china, [2] the fireworks set off [1], here we go again, the champagne bottle [2] pops open, and the neighbour with [3] his daughter find it funny to throw the little fireworks [4] at us and laugh as we get scared, sigh, optimism [5] wears off easily and we retreat upstairs [6] again, one more sip of champagne [7], wishing for better neighbours in this [8] new year.. and.. and.. and.. everything.. [9] for all of you, faraway and close..

abstract2009

abstract and blurry but right here in front of you

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they call it the modern sky
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the inside and the outside and the secret of the fear of the fear


 
“It is true, part of us has disappeared, but reality itself remains. The fact that, today, we can say that the geography of the outside has changed, that the outside no longer exists, that we are all enclosed within, means that, at the same time, the outside is everywhere. But we should have to be able to divide the division to recover what is left.
It is a trap we accept and that maintains the fiction of ‘this totality’ which paralyzes us as much as it amputates a part of us. And thus we are not, not even sentimentally, without strength and courage in our zeal to maintain a worrying normality which we have not really chosen. 
(…) this is the reason why what we can still recover no longer concerns ourselves but our remains; I believe this is the only hope we have for simply making use of our lives. For we can no longer separate ourselves from what is incrusted within us. We can no longer lose ourselves, because we are already almost no longer here. However, we can try to abandon ourselves there where we are shattered in a thousand pieces and perhaps recover our outside. and i am not in a position to say whether, in this case, the form does not come anymore than it leaves.” (alejandra riera, enquiry into the/our outside)

(reading through old notebooks, looking for things to hold on to, lines becoming blurry, the summer dissolving in front of our eyes..)

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reflections, some nights before the incident

we drive into the night. not a soul. hardly a light. darkness and four lanes. and the vast abyss. enormous factories. chimneys. machines. conveyor belts. abandoned. left in silence. a grand rail station, concrete, steel and the dark. gas stations as pits of sand. dogs, astray. then, the chaos. the mess you forget sometimes confined in the capital and its delegates. truck upon truck upon truck. load upon load upon load. and coal. like black soil. rows of trucks parked along the highway like a derailed train. waiting. for a call. a sign. north (the privileged) or east (the lacking). cardboard boxes six meters high, heads up on the highway. excuse me, i think i’ve lost my way. mapless, pointless, endless. east ring south ring west ring. east it is. day time now. two lanes. sea. goods. conformist transport for alternative transport. but how long will it last? how long will we last? he enters, sits, and it fills the room. “so uncalled for”. electric fingers. “knocking down the banks of guilt”. electric toes. loss and losses. they become a part of you. they are a part of you. hold on and learn or let go and learn. or repeat your ways to infinity. nothing ever changes but we live in a place that is ever changing. the television set. handshake upon handshake upon handshake. so and so and his wife. so and so and his wife. the park shows an “ethical culture show”. where do we stand with ourselves. so many things left unsaid. left undone. forgotten. did we really meet someone that so reminded us of him. too many people have come and gone. not sure where dream and memory and story meet. it was the characters name in the latest chapter, but ‘v’ replaces ‘w’. what answer are you looking for. you keep pushing the question. it’s in the way you arrange your life. the way you do. the way you are wrong. the way you are right. just watch and you’ll see. we can’t say but we can do. or better yet, we can be. it’s one big, humongous run. another puff. he goes away for business. her baby is finally born. it was a girl, no? never had friends from that far away place so i’ll give you my number. a monolithic sculpture at the centre of the square. that image returns, as it does every now and then. a cap, a green coat, a dark night, frost, and the light, and the light and the stare, a memory like a photograph, lacking the evidence. here, now, tube lights, all white, in motion. the centre of one square kilometer. and la-din-wu. latin dancing. 11-year olds. boys and girls. a bleached-haired teacher. a long way we have come from the spring that came again. no, we can’t allow foreigners. no we don’t have any rooms left. no. no. no the rules have changed. yes, oh, she too? no. at 4 am a yes. a man in pyjamas. faded glory. lions at the gate. emptiness. the secret floor. the 28th floor. the 8th room. 158 yuan. waking up to the foundations. the new. the next. things have changed. six months. things have changed or are the things only surfaces.

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what makes my vacation vacation
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on the verge

回来了，回去了. the hours in between. a trying, an attempt, to make sense of it all, or, digestion, reflection, but, no tripod, or quick thinking, books on a table, and the weather, the weather, apologies, it might have been more interesting, to you, had i made recordings, a spontaneous idea from a flight on sterling, a quick purchase at hema, yet a nasty view of the hotel swimming pool at the holiday inn topkapi, and a continuous falling asleep, the inability to get up at the crack of dawn, and a fear of hotel personnel, so then your memory (always fails) for the last (four) hours before the dash for a forgotten jacket – “i’m only here for a day, i don’t live here anymore, i don’t think it would work out for your greenpeace promotion.. sorry….” in haste forgetting thoughts of afore: contemporary swedish souvenirs: svensson jeans and henry geldzahlers words: “russians are the worst expats, no matter how long they’ve been living in another country, 20 years or more, they’re still yearning for russia.” and yes or no quotation marks, alternate shots, dot dot, wipe, dot dot, wipe, and ‘child’ might have been better than ‘baby’, a shock at the dinner table, and the wonders of photoshop when misspelling words in foreign languages, and perhaps one should stick to single lines in future… …but thank you very much for your words, it was nice to see you (again)…

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