Bits of Fun — City Gallery Wellington Exhibit: “On Reflection” — Experiential Hierarchy — Carved Up Like a Thanksgiving Turkey
Funny or fascinating details from last few days:
-public art that stands after the earthquake (entered “red zone” and saw them still standing)
-old man who hosts travelers just to have someone to condescend to (because Alexa apparently doesn’t listen so well to his request to play that Australian folk artist)
-tree hedges as wind buffers along farms
[entry in notebook dated October 25, 2018, Christchurch]
A card from Perfect Photo, with two magnifications of a graduation shot: a young man, capped and gowned. (It’s blurry as hell, which makes one question the choice of adjective for this particular photography operation.) The boy’s gown blows in the wind almost imperceptibly to the left.
Down the line, a snapshot of a windsock, tail extended to the left. An image of a woman holding a bouquet with ribbons blowing out, again to the left. A photo of a car with engine on fire, smoke billowing out—you guessed it, to the left.
Just a few images of a larger collection pinned up to a gallery wall, gathered and arranged by artist Patrick Pound. He’s primarily a photographer says the wall text — it’s just that he’s not the one taking the photos. He’s pulled them together, from eBay and other online sources. The result is an eclectic mix of commercial imagery — magazine cutouts, ads — and personal snapshots arranged primarily in horizontal lines centered on a theme or concept, with smaller vertical tributaries breaking off up and down, suggesting a cross-pollination of other themes that I can only sometimes identify.
I wander among these collections and get lost — which must be the idea I think. My eyes dart back and forth in search of the pattern. What is it? they ask. And in the darting and the sorting and the solving of the mystery, the images lose their specificity, become an idea, a concept, a keyword in a search engine. Wind moving to the left. The shadow of the photographer. People on the phone. People in cars. Images with letters — A through Z — or with numbers — 1 through 26.
And then there’s the sudden shock back: but wait, I’m looking at real people here. These ones, they must be from the ’50s or ’60s. A birthday party. A vacation. A quotidian moment.
You wonder, are they still alive? Or are they long gone? Do they remember this moment? Is it as clear in their minds as it is in this snapshot?
And it’s this oscillation between the general and the specific, the masses and the individual, the intellectually captivating and the emotionally poignant that is both exhilarating and frightening — frightening because you know that your image (or that of your mom, your ex-boyfriend, your beloved cat Hayworth) is no different.
Well, if I follow the “What Auckland Is” trend for Wellington — it wouldn’t be much more than a hostel room.
Which, to be honest, I don’t mind. It sticks out in my mind. We often do this automatic hierarchy of experience — elsewhere is better than home, outside greater than indoors, beach better than non-beach, etc. Spending 20+ hours in a day on the top bunk of a 4-bed hostel room — while a new city moves outside — probably ranks quite low on the hierarchy. And yet… I liked yesterday. I found a bit of home in this hostel I thought I hated. I bonded, mostly non-verbally, with the room’s other occupants, Yuki especially. I read, watched movies, wrote, made plans. I was as much in Wellington as doing anything else.
[entry in notebook dated October 20, 2018, Wellington, after a day holed up in bed, sick with a cold]
The Wellington waterfront seems designed for exploring. Here a hole cut into the wharf, with a staircase that spirals up so you can jump into the waters below, kids swimming alongside the pilings that hold up this wooden surface upon which I walk. Over here a smaller inlet, separated by a pedestrian bridge from the larger bay and occupied by a small jutting peninsula flush with native flora, large rocks for sitting, and oxidized remnants of an industrial port, scattered as sculpture. Then another bridge over there, rising up, constructed from large beams of sea-weathered lumber into shapes of whales and birds of prey.
Spaces carved out, lifted up, submerged, tucked away, just around the corner. Places within place to make a place all that much more place-y. Because at any given time you will find yourself a place apart, a place just for you.
Like picture a circle in your mind. It’s a singular place, all parts seen and known from any vantage point. But now take that circle and cut a wedge, pull it down a level. Now you’ve got an upper place and a lower, submerged one. Or better yet, take the circle, cut a line from the edge to its center and pull one end of that cut down. Then connect the disjointed pieces with steps — so now you’ve got a semi-spiral and lots of places now: top of steps, mid-slope of spiral, bottom of steps, and on the steps.
I used to imagine design as this process of making disparate parts unified. But now I wonder: maybe it’s also about taking a thing and cutting it up, carving it out and twisting it, creating new levels and pockets and paths, each its own unique creation that’s linked to the last only by proximity and that feeling of wonder when you find an end that’s just a new beginning. So maybe in the best design you get so lost in the particular that its relationship to the whole hardly matters.
A thing to remember when I show up at that next hostel or when I park my Toyota Hiace campervan at the next campsite. It’s not about finding a spot to fit in. It’s about carving out that space where I can stand out — even if it’s just for myself.
In Place explores what it’s like to be in this place, Aotearoa New Zealand — and what it means to be in place more generally, what it means to belong. For more posts, visit https://medium.com/in-place.
