Read about an artist, whom I had never heard of before, in the NYTimes Magazine today. This particular description of his work struck me in the part of my brain that is left open for stimuli relating to my thesis:
’To Storr, the provisional, shifting shape of Anatsui’s art is one of the keys to its originality. In the catalog to the coming Museum for African Art retrospective, Storr argues that Anatsui’s work ‘‘is fundamentally anti-monumental: it does not stand its ground. . . . Rather it takes the shape of circumstances and so epitomizes contingency.’(my italics)
Fabric, network, mesh. Thoughts of Ito's bundled columns in the Sendai Mediateque. Woke this morning, with vague worry of time running out here in BKK, but with the image of bundled sticks. Phrase something like 'a thousand imperfect dreams are stronger..' provided the voice-over. What if the image of the city becomes the vision of too few? (monument) Is what can only be interesting to be found in what emerges in the leftovers? (contingency) The work of many hands:
Old Roman symbol, the Fasces, clasped in portraits by emperors - (including the farmer/general Cincinnatus) - a bundle of sticks.
An agrarian metaphor in the age of the city, which alone marks it. Weaving the waste of the industrial process, making them whole and new.
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