PARIS TEXT
Here is a text I wrote for the exhibition I'm in in Paris. The exhibition had no promotional card. Instead, I used the mailing-list to distribute this text as my piece for the show:
I want to write some thoughts for you before they escape me. Last Sunday, I arrived in Paris. I came by train, arriving at Gare du Nord just as the sun was setting. I spent the last part of the journey watching the sun become more vibrantly red as it descended upon the horizon. When I exited the train and walked into the station, I was still carrying the sun's image in my retinal memory. It was like a small ball of light that fell on everything I pointed my eyes at. Upon looking at the lamps in the station, I noticed how similar they were to the ball of light I was carrying with me. It was as if the station was filled with little suns that rise when the real sun disappears.
Two days prior, last Friday, I went to the Musée Kröller-Müller in Holland. After visiting the museum and attempting to look at every sculpture in the sculpture garden, I became a little tired. I rode the white bike around looking for a place to lie in the grass to take a nap. I found a sundial, and decided that was the perfect place to lie under the sun. The part of the sundial that casts the shadow is called the gnomon, which points towards the North Star. The shadow of the gnomon falls upon a number, in which one can read the day's time. In a sense, this shadow was the first time that time had an image. Unlike a clock, it only worked in the daytime (and only when the weather was good). But also unlike a clock, dependent on self-contained mechanics to function, the sundial depended on a larger celestial relationship. It developed out of a relationship with the skies. Time was inseparable from the sun, the moon, and the stars. This inseparability, this relationship with the skies, is no longer.
I have been spending my nights in Paris wandering through the streets (like many before me). Though a familiar sight, my eyes have been attracted to the shadows on the ground. In particular, the shadows from narrow objects which stand perpendicular to the street: poles, trees, posts, etc... These shadows, resulting from the lights of street lamps, stores, and advertisements, stay motionless for the duration of the night. Like the shadow of a gnomon, they tell a particular time. Because they are motionless, it is as if time was standing still. But I feel this observation is too quick. The gnomon did not only tell what time it was. It stood as a mediator between the skies and the Earth. These shadows are indicative of a lost relationship. Clocks, the city, the ATM machines that never sleep, they follow no on-and-off rhythms but the mechanization of constant perpetuity. They do not allow time for rest. They do not follow the sun, and allow for the stars to come out. And it is these same lights, the ones that cast the shadows of motionless gnomons at our feet that obscure the sky above. They are why our nights have no stars in the sky.
Sometimes, I imagine a blackout occurring across the city after the rain comes and washes away all the pollution in the air. We could sit in the middle of a boulevard and stare up at the sky watching the time pass with the stars.
I want to write some thoughts for you before they escape me. Last Sunday, I arrived in Paris. I came by train, arriving at Gare du Nord just as the sun was setting. I spent the last part of the journey watching the sun become more vibrantly red as it descended upon the horizon. When I exited the train and walked into the station, I was still carrying the sun's image in my retinal memory. It was like a small ball of light that fell on everything I pointed my eyes at. Upon looking at the lamps in the station, I noticed how similar they were to the ball of light I was carrying with me. It was as if the station was filled with little suns that rise when the real sun disappears.
Two days prior, last Friday, I went to the Musée Kröller-Müller in Holland. After visiting the museum and attempting to look at every sculpture in the sculpture garden, I became a little tired. I rode the white bike around looking for a place to lie in the grass to take a nap. I found a sundial, and decided that was the perfect place to lie under the sun. The part of the sundial that casts the shadow is called the gnomon, which points towards the North Star. The shadow of the gnomon falls upon a number, in which one can read the day's time. In a sense, this shadow was the first time that time had an image. Unlike a clock, it only worked in the daytime (and only when the weather was good). But also unlike a clock, dependent on self-contained mechanics to function, the sundial depended on a larger celestial relationship. It developed out of a relationship with the skies. Time was inseparable from the sun, the moon, and the stars. This inseparability, this relationship with the skies, is no longer.
I have been spending my nights in Paris wandering through the streets (like many before me). Though a familiar sight, my eyes have been attracted to the shadows on the ground. In particular, the shadows from narrow objects which stand perpendicular to the street: poles, trees, posts, etc... These shadows, resulting from the lights of street lamps, stores, and advertisements, stay motionless for the duration of the night. Like the shadow of a gnomon, they tell a particular time. Because they are motionless, it is as if time was standing still. But I feel this observation is too quick. The gnomon did not only tell what time it was. It stood as a mediator between the skies and the Earth. These shadows are indicative of a lost relationship. Clocks, the city, the ATM machines that never sleep, they follow no on-and-off rhythms but the mechanization of constant perpetuity. They do not allow time for rest. They do not follow the sun, and allow for the stars to come out. And it is these same lights, the ones that cast the shadows of motionless gnomons at our feet that obscure the sky above. They are why our nights have no stars in the sky.
Sometimes, I imagine a blackout occurring across the city after the rain comes and washes away all the pollution in the air. We could sit in the middle of a boulevard and stare up at the sky watching the time pass with the stars.