And the waterbirds
Become white.
2021
Surface letter, 2021
Sticker foil
83,5 x 140 cm
Holding on (top 4), 2021
found steel objects
58x30x36 cm
placing for top 3 , 2021
wax
height : variable, 30x50 cm
Crawling out (top 4), 2021
Found steel objects
58x30x36 cm
to swallow a cloud, 2021
Wax, steel
65x20x10,5 cm
inframince infra-mince infra minceExhibition, Universitätsgalerie im HeiligenkreuzerhofWien, Vienna, 2021
inframince infra-mince infra minceExhibition, Universitätsgalerie im HeiligenkreuzerhofWien, Vienna, 2021
While going through my letter and postcard archive I stumbled upon a postcard you gifted me on the 2nd of March, my name day. The postcard struck me as something indubitably relatable and important in connection to what I’m lately thinking about, even a general inkling
encompassing my life in this period. As we have decided to continue our collaboration I decided to share a couple of thoughts I have on my mind that I’m tying together with some works I’m currently spending time with.
The postcard shows a reproduction of an aerial photograph, a close up of the Vesuvius crater in Napoli. The image is strangely framed, the crater itself is taking up almost all the frame except that the round outer edge of the crater is left to be seen in its roundness and in doing so the photographer has uncovered a bit of the scenery behind it. The scenery in the background seems to be bathing in turquoise, it's the blue that Anne Carson describes as the blue that makes one's life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. At first, I mistook the background for the sea or a lake but then I started noticing these white speckles in the alluring blueness, on a closer look they turned out to be houses. Houses hiding or my sight not wanting to see them, me seeing what I want to see, seeing what I miss so much.
And then the black shadow, the void in the crater. It makes me think of ancient bell casting methods, our walks next to the Wienfluss, and how I slept with the light on until I was 13.Now I try to imagine, maybe you also should try to imagine how it is to be deep into this crater. I guess it would be not much different from how it felt to be in the dark before I was 13.
Recently I experienced a lot of strange sensations while being in one of the tunnels covering the Wienfluss- at one point where the concrete formation is making a turn I found myself at a point where when looking back I saw nothing and when looking forward there was nothing to be seen as well and at this point there was no difference between looking up, looking down, back, forth, around, inside, outside.
For a brief moment it’s all the same really, the body as a scale, as an orienteer in space stops functioning. Similar to how you say a word until it loses its meaning, until it falls off your tongue and you doubt its existence, just exactly like that the body in a dark space, in the belly of the volcanic crater, doubting its own existence.
The body that was the orienting machine in the space becomes one with the space, you look around and see nothing, there is nothing visual to be processed. This deep dark delicious nothingness is quick and seems to creep inside one's body and then reflect outwards again immediately. The only measure is sound, without it no doubt I would just start levitating in pace. Being in the suspense of time. Now I feel like I carry it inside me, this dark and delicious nothingness.
But the suspense of time, I’d like to say something about that as well, to me something has changed in how I live in time since the start of autumn - all the days seem to flow into one and time is becoming this strange irrelevant mass with no clear borders, this too, with no doubt, is something currently important in my life. Maybe I am melting away?
At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the being's stability -a being who does not want to melt away, and who, even in the past, when he sets out in search of things past, wants time to "suspend" its flight. In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for.
On another postcard you sent me there is a haiku -
A gust of wind-
And the waterbirds
Become white.
This makes me tie another knot in this letter, there is something I cannot get out of my mind for quite some time, something I read in a book written in the 18th century by the British natural scientist Gilbert White. Inhabitants of the region of Selborne at that time, including natural scientists believed that there were birds who spent the cold winter months hibernating underneath water surfaces. Apparently it felt quite common sense that these creatures who spend a lot of their time next to water basins, lakes, rivers could just dive underneath the cold water surfaces and hibernate in the depths of frozen lakes. I imagine the inhabitants of Selborne taking walks during winter, maybe even ice skating on the frozen lakes and thinking about flocks of birds enjoying their winter rest in the depths. Since the day I found out about this I cannot stop imagining myself both as the birds floating between seaweeds and the people being sure about the unseeable winter sleep of these winged creatures.
I am sure this is interconnected to everything I mentioned before, especially time, but I’m not completely sure what is the connection yet. At some moments I fear that the event, the important moment that is happening only gains its importance later on, it’s hard to grasp it at the moment it is happening. Maybe similarly to time in Bruegel's paintings- historically important moments are depicted but not centred, they are shown in the context. Time now and time in the past. Maybe our concern with history is a concern with pre-formed images already imprinted on our minds, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, far away, somewhere yet undiscovered, uncovered.
I for sure know I can continue spiralling. But I’ll get back to someone we both hold dear - maybe the spiral with it's two directions really is an attempt at controlling the chaos. But first one has to know their own exact location in the spiral. Now I feel like I'm not sure where to locate myself though, there is the beginning at the outside, then maybe the winding in and then in the end the beginning at the centre. Maybe I’m drifting between all of them. Anyway, whatever way the spiral, or I am turning, it represents the fragility in an open space. And as we know - fear makes the world go round. Spiralling into a breeze as the wind rolls out to the turquoise water,
Luīze