Reflective Infinity, Cockatoo Island, Sydney, April 2008, JB
10 May 2008
Reflective Infinity, Cockatoo Island, Sydney, April 2008, JB
09 May 2008
INFINITY ... AND BEYOND
Infinity is a necessary frustration. It also is immensely terrifying. Particularly that point where eternity and infinity intersect, some kind of swirling maelstrom perhaps, or maybe a moment of incredible stasis, silence, somnolence, where Pascal can be barely heard, "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose wonder and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."
So what happens when something is completed, something that had been considered infinite reaches, for a moment, a point of finitude. It is like unrequited love becoming requited, and thence a source of disillusionment. Better not to reach that point, but to remain in that state of becoming, in all senses of the word. But that stage of finishing a sizable project, sending it out into the world, and being left with nothing but a void, yawning, gaping, aching, awaiting something to rush in, swirl in and take its place. To restore infinity.
So what happens when something is completed, something that had been considered infinite reaches, for a moment, a point of finitude. It is like unrequited love becoming requited, and thence a source of disillusionment. Better not to reach that point, but to remain in that state of becoming, in all senses of the word. But that stage of finishing a sizable project, sending it out into the world, and being left with nothing but a void, yawning, gaping, aching, awaiting something to rush in, swirl in and take its place. To restore infinity.
∞
Infinity Culvert, Halswell (that ends well), May 2008, JB
04 May 2008
AUTUMN HARVEST
Quiet days as autumn segues away into winter. A weekend storm. A certain light. The chill in the air. Another time unfurls. Two times. Long ago, a film, Diva. The scene: a spare apartment, in the centre of which sits a bath tub. The rest of the film fades, apart from the magnificent aria from La Wally, yet this mise-en-scene remains. And then, not long ago, arriving in New York. Late night arrival, delayed, plane 'broken'. 2:00 am. Crisp air. Fall. Delivered to the odd urban square, very much as it had been described: the clock, the concrete seats, the planters. And there sitting amongst it, the square's describer, smoking, staring at the night sky. Talking into the night, tea, wine, exchanges of gifts, sitting in the kitchen. The only room in the apartment which is not a bedroom. Through tired eyes the sculptural form of a bathtub looms in the shadows at the side of the kitchen. Then he fills it - 'this is for you'. Out of my head, into a film, bathing, the sound of Manhattan swirling. Drifting. Days later the odd urban square becomes a lounge, a retreat. Sitting, reading, Twilight of Love. Robert Dessaix's tale of travelling in search of Turgenev. 'Are you okay?' - a stranger. Tears are flowing, unbeknownst. For the book? For this exile in the urban square? For faraway, so close, in time, in space ...
01 May 2008
'FOUND' SCULPTURE
Art sometimes lurks in the most unexpected places, appearing as readymades, already existing works of art. The recent attack on the spy facilities at Waihopai in Marlborough (aka 'Spy Valley') created a massive sculpture of grace and elegance. The draping form of the deflated sphere - the balloon-like prophylactic cover for the satellite dish - is at once a Christo sculpture, with its folding and shadows evocative of his wrapped Reichstag, Running Fence ...
28 April 2008
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
TB Macaulay, the 19th century poet, historian and politician, described a future where a ‘New Zealander’ (i.e. a Maori), a visitor from an Arcadian paradise, would witness London in ruins. In 1840 he wrote of imagining the melancholy day when “some traveller from New Zealand shall in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.” Gustave Doré made an engraving called The New Zealander in 1873, which appears to illustrate Macaulay’s vision. The ‘wizard-like’ figure, the New Zealander in his cloak, holds a sketchbook, and is drawing the ruins of St Paul’s. This seems an intriguing inversion of the tradition of death in paradise, a convention expressed in 19th century images of explorers in the New World, where images of death - skulls, coffins, and such - are shown amidst the untrammelled Arcadian landscapes.
27 April 2008
Over stubble-field and path
A black silence lurks in fear
Purest sky amid the branches
Only the brook runs silent and still
Fish and game soon slip away
Blue soul, darksome wandering
Soon severed us from loved ones, others.
Evening alters sense and image
From George Trakl's Autumn Soul
Across the Valley, Christchurch, April 2008
A black silence lurks in fear
Purest sky amid the branches
Only the brook runs silent and still
Fish and game soon slip away
Blue soul, darksome wandering
Soon severed us from loved ones, others.
Evening alters sense and image
From George Trakl's Autumn Soul
Across the Valley, Christchurch, April 2008
26 April 2008
REMEMBERING NOT TO FORGET
“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.
In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”Milan Kundera, Slowness (1995)
Cockatoo Island, Sydney, April 2008, jb
21 April 2008
THE CELESTIAL CEILING
Sitting at this desk, far away in other lands, it is easy to drift. The eye traces over the unfamiliar terrain, a vast apartment, tidy, clean, and spare. Xavier de Maistre is here, recounting the Voyage around my Room. He'd been kept in his room for 42 days as a punishment for duelling, and during this time carefully negotiated all of the domestic topography that surrounded him. Everything is carefully plotted, a whole chapter on the folds of his coat, a circumnavigation of his writing desk, his chair, his bed, and to his library which is beyond compare as uncharted terrain, "Cook's voyages, and the observations of his travelling companions, doctors Banks and Solander, are nothing compared to my adventures in this single region." And at one stage he peeks out the window, beholding the vastness of the night sky above, the empyrean sublimity. Looking up, I notice that right here on the ceiling is a planetary system, the water planets of sprinklers, the vast planetary bodies of light, some with rings around them, others attended by small moons of their own ... an entire universe of infrastructure.
19 April 2008
Recording battlefield sites, the interior of the Sydney War Memorial in Hyde Park offers a kind of cataclysmic catechism, a series of answers for which there is no question.
This lamentation, this litany, invites recitation.
Whether aloud, if that is allowed within the hallowed hall.
Or in one's head, a silent internal navigation through places far away.
A poem without rhyme, or reason.
An ubi sunt prayer, the 'where are?' question echoing through the years.
12 April 2008
WINDOW BOXES
Opposite this hotel apartment complex here in Sydney is an apartment building. With a facade of glass it is like a large vitrine, with lives exhibited. A distant echo of the small cabinets that would travel to the country school I went to as a child, magical boxes containing microcosmic exhibits from the museum in the city far away. Like the Wardian cases that the plant hunters packed New Zealand's plants into to take them back to the Mother Land as exotic curiosities. And, echoes too, of Joseph Cornell's constructions, shadow boxes containing surreal collections of elements, evoking a somehow forlorn air.
And these window boxes are most definitely forlorn. On display are not the exalted moments of life. These are not trophy cabinets, more like atrophy cabinets. Places where things go to waste away. Life's detritus packed into these spaces, marginal zones, out of sight for the residents perhaps, but exhibited for the world beyond. Life as Readymade.
And these window boxes are most definitely forlorn. On display are not the exalted moments of life. These are not trophy cabinets, more like atrophy cabinets. Places where things go to waste away. Life's detritus packed into these spaces, marginal zones, out of sight for the residents perhaps, but exhibited for the world beyond. Life as Readymade.
Wardian Case
Joseph Cornell, Planet Set, Tête Etoilée, Giuditta Pasta (dédicace) 1950
Joseph Cornell, Planet Set, Tête Etoilée, Giuditta Pasta (dédicace) 1950
Window / Box, Sydney, 2008
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JACKY BOWRING
- Age:
- Location:Aotearoa New Zealand
- Interests:Revelation, Invention, Speculation, Provocation, Textual Pleasures, Landscape, Architecture, Art: all of the above lightly sauteed and consumed with a fine red...
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