Sunday 7 April 2013

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - RONI HORN






Water is something I love too.  I remember I did a project in San Sabastian sea coast, taking shots with fixed interval to an ever moving sea area.  Horn's text seems clever too.  I can not read well, so I bought a book to read.  There are lots of similarities with my skyscape project.  Horn's work is very enlightening, I mean most of her works, the Weather portrait, the Iceland project etc...


1
My gaze alights on the water, on this spot on the river, here where the water is turning around, where the currents turn the water in tightening circles. I can't turn away. I want to feel time twist as I watch these spirals forming. I want to feel time twist and myself turning as I watch them disappear. I want to twist with the turning water. I want to watch these spirals turn themselves invisible. I want to watch them turning from the surface, turning down into the depths where I cannot see them. I want to turn invisible with them. I want to turn with them, invisible and keep turning.

Black water is opaque water, toxic or not. Black water is always violent. Even when slow moving, black water dominates, bewitches, subdues. Black water is alluring because it is disturbing and irreconcilable. Black water is violent because it is alluring and because it is water.

Water is lubricant to other places. It dilutes gravity when you're in it. It reduces friction when you're around it. Almost any form of water—rivers, lakes, oceans, even sinks—will do. My mind roams freely, breezily near it. My thoughts take me backward and forward. Time has no direction near water.

Water is lubricant to other places. It catalyzes memory and aspiration. This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is separate from any other water. In the River Thames, in an arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your eyes and in every other microcosmic part of you, and me, all waters converge.

2
Some Thames is literally the idea of a finite thing having an infinite range of appearance or expression because of its inseparable relation to other things, which is what water is — its relation to other things.  

When I look at water I'm entering into an event of relation. Rather than an object, water becomes a form — of consciousness, or time, of physicality, of the human condition, of anything I desire to project on it, of anything I want it to be.  

This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is separate from any other water.

In the River Thames, in an Arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your eyes, in every other microscopic part of you (and me), all waters converge.

Invisible continuity is intrinsic to water. This continuity exceeds us even while being the biggest part of us. It's this continuity that makes our effect on water an effect on us. That is to say: "I am the Thames!" or "The Thames is me!"  

3
There is one yellowish photograph of the Thames, for example. It shows a little white froth at the lower right corner, some patches of baby blue and a few wisps of brown. It looks a little like a desert. Many of the footnotes run along a brownish crevice in the water.
They go like this: ''28 Is this khaki or beige? 29 Is this beige or ochre? 30 Is this ochre or yellow? 31 Is this yellow or tan? 32 Is this tan or brown? 33 Is this brown or black? 34 Is this black. . . . 36 What does water look like? 37 See Sand (Especially sand dunes.) 38 See deserts, for example the Gobi or the Sahara. 39 There's a story (it's true) about a man traveling by Tube to Westminster Bridge handcuffed to a chair. He threw himself in the river with the chair. He was found some days later downstream attached to a stick of wood and a section of naugahyde (almond-colored).''
The color exercise is fun. At every point, you can look at the picture of the yellowish river and think, ''Is this beige or ochre?'' and ''Is this ochre or yellow?'' It is strangely absorbing. It is nice to be carried away by someone else's thoughts while looking at water, to see whether your thoughts match hers.

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