6 posts from juli 2007

disappointed
trespassing
imagination
differently
beautifully
barricading
preciseness
polyurethane
bodybuilder

(from the "Love letters to a perfect audience")

“An albino rabbit was fastened with its head facing a barred window. From this position the rabbit could see only a gray and clouded sky. The animal’s head was covered for several minutes with a cloth to adapt its eyes to the dark, that is to let rhodopsin accumulate in its rods. Then the animal was exposed for three minutes to the light. It was immediately decapitated, the eye removed and cut open along the equator, and the rear half of the eyeball containing the retina laid in a solution of alum for fixation. The next day Kühne saw, printed upon the retina in bleached and unaltered rhodopsin, a picture of the window with the clear pattern of its bars.” 1

From “Eye and Camera”, an article by George Wald about experiments leading up to the scientific discovery that the imprint of exterior objects imprinted upon the retina of the eye are conserved there indefinitely. The organ of vision contains a particular substance, retinal purple, on which is imprinted in their exact form these images. They have even been perfectly reconstituted when the eye, after death, is removed and soaked in an alum bath.

In 1888 Scotland Yard cut open the eyes of the dead Annie Chapman and photographed her retina. They were hoping for an image of Jack the Ripper.The photo remained black.

1 (Wald, George. “Eye and Camera,” Scientific American Reader. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1953. 555-68)

This is the video I made for my artist talk that was scheduled for Friday July 6 at 8pm. I couldn't be there myself, I had to return to Holland and was in a plane from New York to Amsterdam around that time. The video was made in the evening of Thursday July 5 and the following night and morning.

I’m back in Amsterdam. I took a plane last Friday and I landed today, Thursday. This morning I checked my email for the first time. I found an old message from Mary in my spambox, trying to hide, to get lost. But I’m getting experienced in the art of disappearing.  I know the tricks.
She wrote me a message to remind me of the anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s dissapearance. She flew away, never to return. Amelia Earhart. There’s a photo of her in the Sky Lounge at Elsewhere. She became the first woman - and second person - to fly solo across the Atlantic. During her second attempt to fly across the world on July 2, 1937, she disappeared. Her plane was never found.

Mary sent me her email on July 4. I never saw it. But that same day my mother-in-law died. She died at 17.15 and at 20.30 the same day my grandmother died. They must have decided to travel together. They met only once but they always inquired after each other. My husband remarked: “It probably takes a soul three hours to travel from one end of the Netherlands to the other end to collect another soul.”
They made me leave Elsewhere. I didn’t mind. (I did. I did!) I didn’t mind.

Although it was sad it didn’t hurt to see the two old ladies. But it hurted to see their children look at them. They lost their mother. The person who gave birth to them. They lost their beginning. But they themselves continued to exist. They didn’t disappear. And they didn’t understand.

I don’t understand either. Where are they now? Where am I?

My grandmother was buried last Monday. She was carried by her children from her house to the church. The street was covered with rose petals. At the cemetary the birds had gathered to sing her a last song.

My mother-in-law was cremated last Tuesday. We escorted her on her last but one outing (for the last one we’ll take her to the sea on her birthday, August 5). When we left the crematorium after the service a rattling thunderclap sounded in the blue sky. Like Stravinsky said: “Always end with a big bang.”