I am stuck in a queue at the [ ] in Departure [ ], Check-in [ ], then waiting for security, (all)passport control, and walking towards gate [ ]. Designated points indicate the duration of the wait. Having gone through the same route just a month ago, the sense of familiarity creates a feeling of displacement, of feeling uncomfortable with how comfortable I am, knowing how long it takes to get from one point to another.
all the while. meanwhile. the wait cuts off the blood flow between the neck and the shoulder. Pulling backwards, bending forwards. The negotiation between opposite forces exhausts the axis. Tingles unfurl, scattering through numb limbs, calling for movement where movement is contained between the stretch of two elastic bands parallel to each other. The wait instructs how to move in fixity. Hand movement. Fingers opening and closing. Drawing circles. Toe stretch. Neck bend. Nervous looks. Up and down. Looking left. Right. Again forward. Counting movements. The pace. Pacing foot in a fixed place. Exhales. Heart palpitations. Inhale. Cough. We have forgotten about the cough, no longer bothering us, still present in the line patterns drawn on the floor. Traces of a past that is yet to come. Juxtaposed movement choreography of crises in continued rehearsal. How would the sonority of these lines ring if played loud? Euphony folded into a short circuit generated by overlaid syncopations. High-pitched, straining tightness imploding into a cacophony we try to perceive as harmony. Not minding the dissonances. Condition, conditions the condition. One crisis overrides the other. The biggest threat at this very moment is not reaching the flight. Reaching the flight only to realise that the departure is delayed, no longer departing. Arriving only to discover that the luggage had been mislaid.
all the while. meanwhile. the wait cuts off the blood flow between the neck and the shoulder. Pulling backwards, bending forwards. The negotiation between opposite forces exhausts the axis. Tingles unfurl, scattering through numb limbs, calling for movement where movement is contained between the stretch of two elastic bands parallel to each other. The wait instructs how to move in fixity. Hand movement. Fingers opening and closing. Drawing circles. Toe stretch. Neck bend. Nervous looks. Up and down. Looking left. Right. Again forward. Counting movements. The pace. Pacing foot in a fixed place. Exhales. Heart palpitations. Inhale. Cough. We have forgotten about the cough, no longer bothering us, still present in the line patterns drawn on the floor. Traces of a past that is yet to come. Juxtaposed movement choreography of crises in continued rehearsal. How would the sonority of these lines ring if played loud? Euphony folded into a short circuit generated by overlaid syncopations. High-pitched, straining tightness imploding into a cacophony we try to perceive as harmony. Not minding the dissonances. Condition, conditions the condition. One crisis overrides the other. The biggest threat at this very moment is not reaching the flight. Reaching the flight only to realise that the departure is delayed, no longer departing. Arriving only to discover that the luggage had been mislaid.
The warmth bounces off bodies. Dry air brings out the humidity from the dermis, holding it suspended in the air. A sip of water dries quickly. The second feels like an hour with the ticking of the clock. An unproportionate length-wait to time-wait. Worrying closeness. To the due time. The proximity between bodies after a long period of exercised distancing. The complexities that distancing unfold. Requirements of x-amount of space per single body. Oh, how quickly we crowded the place with insolence. Failing to remember that place-owning brings out further complications we persistently fail to attend to. The luxury of having breathing space between two breaths. Of moving separately. Capacity to be not depending on. Supporting.
Line C cuts into D. Passengers from A have ended up mixing with those standing in E. The anticipation of what everyone is fearing nearing. In the background, a voice grumbles about the chaos at the airport. Someone quickly starts giving out stroopwafels and ice cream. Keeping people's blood sugar in check aids in crowd control. Sucking on artificially flavoured, radiant pink aardbei ( eng. strawberry) ice cream and feeling soft caramel sticking to our teeth, we feel taken care of. The embittered taste of hasty decisions governed by a corporate balance sheet and short-term planning. False reassurances and dormant signals that everything is about to explode at any given moment. Everybody is trying to rush through security, and everyone is slowing down the tempo by trying to rush at this point. Indulging in the ability to move at the imposed pace, to speed beyond the ability of bodies, making impossible for some to keep up speeding.
Seen through the slowed BPM playing between my ears, the scene renders as future-present fiction played in drawn-out motion. Living the news through the screen while waiting the line, to move further, to reach the point. Reading the promise that the situation will be soon approached differently.
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“ Approaches to What? 1
What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines. Railway trains only begin to exist when they are derailed, and the more passengers that are killed, the more the trains exist. Aeroplanes achieve existence only when they are hijacked. The one and only destiny of motor-cars is to drive into plane trees. Fifty-two weekends a year, fifty-two casualty lists: so many dead and all the better for the news media if the figures keep on going up! Behind the event there has to be a scandal, a fissure, a danger, as if life reveals itself only by way of the spectacular, as if what speaks, what is significant, is always abnormal: natural cataclysms or historical upheavals, social unrest, political scandal.
In our haste to measure the historic, significant and revolutionary, let’s not leave aside the essential: the truly intolerable, the truly inadmissible. What is scandalous isn't the pit explosion, it’s working in coalmines. ‘Social problems’ aren't a ‘matter of concern’ when there is a strike, they are intolerable twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
Tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, tower-blocks that collapse, forest fires, tunnels that cave in, the Drugstore des Champs-Elysées burns down. Awful! Terrible! Monstrous! Scandalous! But where is the scandal? Has the newspaper told us anything except: not to worry, as you can see life exists with its ups and its downs, things happen, as you can see.”
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Line C cuts into D. Passengers from A have ended up mixing with those standing in E. The anticipation of what everyone is fearing nearing. In the background, a voice grumbles about the chaos at the airport. Someone quickly starts giving out stroopwafels and ice cream. Keeping people's blood sugar in check aids in crowd control. Sucking on artificially flavoured, radiant pink aardbei ( eng. strawberry) ice cream and feeling soft caramel sticking to our teeth, we feel taken care of. The embittered taste of hasty decisions governed by a corporate balance sheet and short-term planning. False reassurances and dormant signals that everything is about to explode at any given moment. Everybody is trying to rush through security, and everyone is slowing down the tempo by trying to rush at this point. Indulging in the ability to move at the imposed pace, to speed beyond the ability of bodies, making impossible for some to keep up speeding.
Seen through the slowed BPM playing between my ears, the scene renders as future-present fiction played in drawn-out motion. Living the news through the screen while waiting the line, to move further, to reach the point. Reading the promise that the situation will be soon approached differently.
_______________________
“ Approaches to What? 1
What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines. Railway trains only begin to exist when they are derailed, and the more passengers that are killed, the more the trains exist. Aeroplanes achieve existence only when they are hijacked. The one and only destiny of motor-cars is to drive into plane trees. Fifty-two weekends a year, fifty-two casualty lists: so many dead and all the better for the news media if the figures keep on going up! Behind the event there has to be a scandal, a fissure, a danger, as if life reveals itself only by way of the spectacular, as if what speaks, what is significant, is always abnormal: natural cataclysms or historical upheavals, social unrest, political scandal.
In our haste to measure the historic, significant and revolutionary, let’s not leave aside the essential: the truly intolerable, the truly inadmissible. What is scandalous isn't the pit explosion, it’s working in coalmines. ‘Social problems’ aren't a ‘matter of concern’ when there is a strike, they are intolerable twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
Tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, tower-blocks that collapse, forest fires, tunnels that cave in, the Drugstore des Champs-Elysées burns down. Awful! Terrible! Monstrous! Scandalous! But where is the scandal? Has the newspaper told us anything except: not to worry, as you can see life exists with its ups and its downs, things happen, as you can see.”
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Several hours into the flight, the strong turbulence exhausts the remaining energy left in my body. Dozing off. In and out of sleep.
Upon opening my eyes I noticed that the plane had landed at [ ] Airport. The rain caught onto the glass, blurrs the view from the small window.
Upon opening my eyes I noticed that the plane had landed at [ ] Airport. The rain caught onto the glass, blurrs the view from the small window.
The damp smell filling the metro station, echoes the days to come. The after image. Metallic glitches in the flowing murky grey. Altered landscapes. Street signs leading nowhere. Bursts of green floating over the submerged streets. Grey mixing with deep red. On the fringe, the city dust pleats into deep rich iron oxide containing earth’s particles coming down with the rain from the mountain regions. Sweeping away farmlands, penetrating the nooks and crannies of homes.
Looking at a new blossom on a plant that her mother had given her, she didn't see that her elbow was coming too close to a glass that was overflowing with water until the cold touched her skin. Tracing the borders of her hands, absorbing into the pages of the notebook, mixing with the ink she used for writing and turning the words into blue abstractions. Blues merging with blue, opacities of blues touching each other’s territories. Flowing into one another. What a disaster! - she said while trying to find a piece of fabric to soak up the water. Quickly she clears out the pond forming in the room. Afraid that the moisture will devour the materials she places salt on the ground and picks up the notebook from which blues drips out.
Looking at a new blossom on a plant that her mother had given her, she didn't see that her elbow was coming too close to a glass that was overflowing with water until the cold touched her skin. Tracing the borders of her hands, absorbing into the pages of the notebook, mixing with the ink she used for writing and turning the words into blue abstractions. Blues merging with blue, opacities of blues touching each other’s territories. Flowing into one another. What a disaster! - she said while trying to find a piece of fabric to soak up the water. Quickly she clears out the pond forming in the room. Afraid that the moisture will devour the materials she places salt on the ground and picks up the notebook from which blues drips out.
All along, a television plays in the background, set on mute. Warnings for storm approaching. News submerged with images of floods and storms. Alert for a raging tempest that was already here, near her, around her and in her. A flood that was already rushing to another place, leaving behind the echoes of its presence. Abrupt change in the atmosphere of any site. Even if the flood site is cleared up, the flood remains trapped in the pores of the space. Smells that usually go unnoticed are brought forward. Accentuating their presence before it begins to test the resistance capacity of materials. Black mould covering the walls like calluses on scorched skin.Leaving marks even after healing, after clearing out. A daily reminder of the possibility that the stain will re-emerge. These material structures that gradually become extensions of our bodies, shattered. Eeriness growing in a place that should feel the safest. Balanced grounds turning slippery. Landslides. Slipping. Turbulent forces unstabling the core of unstable bodies.
Blue stains left behind. Disappearing in the blue. Chalk lines folded in the tide. Calmour transmitted in the distance, making echolocating impossible. One struggle bringing another with it. Blue reverberates, reactivating the past into the present. Momentary pause that opens up space for narraatives to be re-read. Written in the pause defined and unsettled by the dissaster. Long before the disaster was in writing.
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In “Writing of the disaster” Maurice Blanchot writes:
Naturally, "disaster" can be understood according to its etymology—of which many fragments here bear the trace. But the etymology of "disaster" does not operate in these fragments as a preferred, or more original insight, ensuring mastery of what is no longer, then, anything but a word. On the contrary, the indeterminateness of what is written when this word is written, exceeds etymology and draws it into the disaster.
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In “Writing of the disaster” Maurice Blanchot writes:
Naturally, "disaster" can be understood according to its etymology—of which many fragments here bear the trace. But the etymology of "disaster" does not operate in these fragments as a preferred, or more original insight, ensuring mastery of what is no longer, then, anything but a word. On the contrary, the indeterminateness of what is written when this word is written, exceeds etymology and draws it into the disaster.
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Landscapes are compressed times in which residues of past future continue to pulsate. Carried across fragments in which fiction meets history. Not becoming a grout, but flare. Possibility birthed from the blaze. Fictive spaces that become possible cosmologies for the unknown, the unnamed, the not yet named, names in waiting, the not located, the never discovered, the others remembered as a number remaining after the equation, the ones who cannot claim the trauma, those who cannot be discovered.Writing in the space which has always been written in parts, hurriedly transcribed struggles. Rendering histories visible.
.to capture the stain of territory emptied is generously supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst