Skies, Zeus and foreign objects.

I found myself looking at pictures of skies today, for their way of being chameleonic, for their way of being vast, but mostly for being extremely unpredictable. Much like life, the sky is boundless and uncontrollable, it exists here, but also there.

Walking home from the subway at 11pm, crossing the desolate market square near my flat, I decided to look up to see what color the sky would be tonight. It was a dark shade of midnight blue, spotted with tiny flocks of golden clouds. As I kept staring at its intensity, I could not help but imagine a sharp, straight, vertical line plummeting down from the sky, halting right on the top of my nose. I froze. Like a one-way roller coaster, my mind traveled from downwards up to the ever so distant sky. At this point, in a state of trance and marvel, I got an uncanny feeling isolation whilst envisioning the annihilation of time and space. Moreover, the further I continued my mental path vertically upwards, the more I could feel my body shrinking to the size of a molecule, an atom, a neutron... "How could this sky be so vast!", i wondered...

Even though I had always been skeptical about believing in the 'all-seeing-eye' watching over humanity, dictated by religious institutions and fear of the unknown, tonight, my thoughts were amended. Whilst visually absorbing the sky, I was drawn into a Zeus-like fantasy, in which I could not help but smile. Perhaps because beyond that endless blue screen, a giant, whatever form he may come as, was watching me, laughing, because whilst I was walking on that desolate market square, aimlessly gazing upwards and philosophizing about nonsensical nonsense, I tripped over a used diaper and sort of hurt myself.

The creator of our thoughts.

During a recent inner debate, I wondered about thoughts and where they originate from. I thought of several options, one being - they are produced by our brain. However I felt this was borderline self-indulgent and therefore decided to venture on a semi-existential philosophical quest for the right answer to my question - see below.

I thought to compare thoughts to the universe. As we do not know when the universe came to be or when it will dismantle itself into nothingness (whatever "nothing" may be), I questioned whether the origin of something as simple as a thought could run parallel with the universe. I envisioned that one day, somebody thought of the universe, after which it appeared, not flawless, perhaps not as great as it was imagined to be, but it appeared and it was magical.

I realized that in the history of mankind "things" only initiated existence when they had been thought about. Let us take gravity as an example; it was granted a valid place in the mind of mankind solely after Sir Isaac Newton thought to appoint it its properties and name it "gravity". So, if gravity didn't exist before Newton's thought, does this mean that thoughts are creators of entities?

Up until this point I concluded that thoughts had the following qualities:

1. they are in congruence with the universe
2. they have no beginning nor end
3. they are the creator of entities

Apart from their power to create entities, I remembered how potent thoughts can be and how they can influence physical properties of the human body. Moreover, I had experienced that bad thoughts or an excess of thoughts (stress) can cause illness whilst on the other hand they can cure and communicate inner universes.

A last question and perhaps the most complex one was just how deep and layered a thought could be. In another comparison to the universe, I thought about black holes and how scientists say they could possible lead to other universes. Furthermore, I imagined it to be very much in line with the human condition of sinking into a thought, the kind of traumatic, imprinted, deeply rooted thought that leads people into other mental worlds, the kind that makes them forget where they were before that one thought.

When I think about the universe now, or when I fail to understand why the world we live in is tempestuous, temperamental, beautiful yet terrifying, I think it could be the result of somebody's thoughts. I imagine we could all be creating universes every day; flooding our world with tears, bringing frost with our hesitance, covering it in sunshine with happiness or warming the universe with our unconditional love.

Jiho Won

Crystal Palace.

L'enfant Darré.

Absolutely amazed by Purple Magazine's interview with Vincent Darré's about life and his latest project, La Maison Darré, an atelier/boutique in Paris.

This excerpt shows a movie by Philip Garrel, entitled, 'L'enfant Secret', where you can see the man himself (Darré) act out a marvelous performance. Must see.

Dolby Labs presents: Ace Norton: Soundclip 2

Sound and image in their purest forms, juxtaposed in a rhythmic switching of frames, an intensely contrasted color scheme and an ingenious arrangement of enticing, "earthly" auditory sensations. Probably the best and most striking clip I have seen this year.
Ace Norton for Dolby Labs: absolutely genius.

SOUNDSCAPES 2 dir. by Ace Norton from IE HAGY on Vimeo.

Sara's Dorian Gray

Temporary yet eternal, Sara VanDerBeek's photographs of her own sculptural work evoke nothing less than a memory of an oeuvre that existed only for the purpose of being photographed. Furthermore, to exist no matter the form or not to exist in actual form, is it the death of a "subject" when it succumbs transformation into different media or is the concept a "Garden of Eden" for art?

The conceptual collage-like constructions are made up out of carefully collected images from a wide range of sources, including art history books, archives, magazines, and newspapers. Immediately following the shoot, VanDerBeek disassembles the works, which leaves the pictures as the sole evidence of the work itself.

My knowledge of the intentional elusion of the sculptures during the exhibition, draws me straight into the images in an unexpected, mindboggling, perhaps self-induced, pseudo-philosophical trip from 2D to 3D. Always having been obsessed with the Gothic Novel "classic collection literature" section of Waterstones, this notion evokes a slumbering feeling of the uncanny for the (to me) unmistakable parallel between VanDerBeek's concept and Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray.

Whether VanDerBeek was trying to preserve the beauty of her work by eternalizing it in digital print will remain a mystery to me until a future encounter, but I am pretty certain she would at least consider seeing my point.

"Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging."

(Wikipedia, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Sara Vanderbeek is currrently exhibiting at the Whitney Museum of American art in NYC, the show runs until december the 5th, well worth checking out whilst in the city.

Kätlin Liiv

An amazing video montage by the very talented Kätlin Liiv, capturing the journey of my friends in Berlin this fall.
Preciously beautiful.