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This is the longest clip from The Most International Artist in the Universe, Tintin Wulia 2011, a site-specific multiple-channel installation of advertisement clips in duration of 15″, 30″, 45″ and 60″ installed in between other artworks and hidden in toilets. |
I have a photograph of you up on the wall on the right side of my bed. You look tormented, what a good acting you’ve done, but still so handsome. Like a beggar, a random someone said, but that’s how I love it. In real life you look seven times more ordinary. And shy, running away constantly from the camera, afraid to give too much of your beautiful soul peeking out of your softly spoken broken English.
But then when I wake up in the morning and look at my face on the mirror I think, hey, I shouldn’t be speaking English. This is such a Chinese face. You are much more authentic in that. May your life be normal, like what any random person’s life is supposed to be.
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Meet toy 5, a cable-controlled truck. Ken and I decided to mux it with toy 6, a baby that gurgles while it crawls on its four little legs.
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Despite promising to let me do the hacking and problem solving, Ken took it all into his hands after Dave kindly (and mindlessly) drew what he thought we should do. I only got to do a bit of thinking and some soldering (really fine soldering I must say). But, well.
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We managed to get the baby crawl forward, and backward, when we command it to do so with the truck’s cable-control.
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And Ken found that there’s a sensor in the baby’s head. What it actually senses is still a mystery, though.
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Mother’s milk, maybe? Thanks to Hackerspace Melbourne for tools and brains, and Ken Lin for having fun with me. |
After injecting anesthetic on my arm, they started operating on it. I could feel something, but it felt like there was a thick barrier between my arm and their operating devices. This is what it feels like: like reading something written on a sheet of paper lying under hundreds of sheets of transparencies. I can see what’s written on that sheet of paper, but there’s a solid distance – the paper visible but untouchable to me.
Anger is something you tame down over time. The memory is there, but it doesn’t incite as much emotional response as when it was fresh. When my heart skips a beat, I can tell you exactly which beat is the one missing: it’s no other than the beat that belongs to him. Because genetics, my friends, is not merely physical.
| Many years ago, I took this photo with my video camera, and learnt quite a bit about politics. |
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The next limbo was where flight attendants and stewardesses came in flirting with each other, joking about their passports, while two brothers from some exotic European country tried to explain that they came to just meet their cousin in the airport then drive his car back to their own country. A Chinese girl who spoke no English tried to appoint me – with her pleading eyes – as her translator, and a young officer thinking he owned the whole world deliberately disconnected my phone call to Moscow, addressing me as a Du instead of a Sie.
Such an animal, me.
I looked out the glass window, stared at the blue sky and realized that I haven’t even breathed in the fresh air of Germany since I arrived, at least forty-four hours earlier. No internet. My mobile was out of battery. I tried to charge it through USB coming out from my draining laptop. I knew it wasn’t going to help. But being able to do little else, I just had to make an effort. Any effort. Even just to breath again.
This must be what a prison feels like. Locked in, serving nothing else but time. Square-ish, steel structure of their glorious modernist past. Cloudless sky. A fixed glass window between me and life. I could have screamed and no one would’ve heard me on the other side. Is ours the side where hope recedes?
The flight was delayed again. I asked for water. The officer said they didn’t have any but if I’d give him a euro he’ll get Sprudelwasser out of the vending machine. I agreed. It came in a plastic cup. Mit sprudel aber niemand weiss was sonst noch. I was thirsty, I didn’t question.
Nothing much ever happened around here. So don’t thank me. This is an interesting case. I’m happy to be of help. It brightened my day.
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Thinking of my magnet and my razorblade today, I had a revelation. How they relate to each other is like what the fox said to the little prince.
Being attracted so strongly to each other, but pulled back by the strings, they were held in place. As I was waiting to see whether their attraction would become weaker overnight, I realized that if the magnet would do anything, it would just magnetize the razorblade – even from a distance – being the rare earth magnet that it was, and being the metal that the razorblade was. Just being themselves, really. |
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It is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important. Except that in this case, it’s not only time that has been devoted. What else, I don’t know yet. Magnetic field, perhaps? Some kind of an energy? What’s interesting is that in this setup, the magnet just hangs from above. It’s the razorblade that was pulled to the ground to create the distance. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise, because the magnet’s just too heavy. In this setup, it was the razorblade that reacted. Attracted by the magnet, it rose up, defying gravity. I’ve witnessed, however, that when the pull somehow ceases – usually mechanically induced – and the razorblade falls, the magnet wobbles around as well. Both the magnet and the razorblade are equal parts of the balance. It seems that there are many types of attractions, and this is just one of them. The earth and the sun also attracts each other, but lucky for us mere mortals of the earth, their attraction is a bit different. |
It’s been a year since last June. I’ve gone through a lot. I’ve learned quite a lot too. Or at least hopefully so. One of the deepest things I learned is that nothing can happen in an instance. This might sound obvious, but words are just words until you experience their meaning, real time. When you make one single footstep at a time, there can only be one leg in front of the other at one single moment. Sometimes rules are not written because they simply make sense.
Looking back, I feel grateful for my second knee injury. It was as though I was given a second chance, a second life, to retry healing again. Differently this time.
Patience is a composed form of persistence.
Cleaning up the kitchen, I couldn’t escape wondering whether it is possible to fall in love with a place. I have many flashes of my past, just me and a place. The way the wind blows, the way the leaves move, the way the sun shines, the way the darkness encapsulates. Looking up to a lamppost, my first snowfall dispersed by light. Climbing down a stony path finding a place by smell. Sitting in an alcove facing the wall where light strips fall. Looking out to the river, and reading that sign: Maribyrnong River Cruises. A cyclist passes by. Thinking how charming this place is. Hoping I will never have to move again. Ignoring my pigheaded melancholy crying out here’s to empty hopes!
Scrubbing the last stains off the floor, I heard the fox whisper to the little prince: it is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important.
One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
Boil water. Put a good amount of basil seeds and goji berries in a bowl. A handful should be fine – my handful that is. When water’s boiled, pour a sufficient amount to cover the basil seeds and goji berries in that bowl, and a bit more.
In the meanwhile, get greek yogurt out of the fridge, wash fruit and cut fruit to bite-sized cubes. Apple, Pear, Watermelon, Mandarins or Navel Oranges, Strawberries, Cherries. Tear some mint or basil leaves and slice finely.
By this time the basil seeds should be of jelly-like consistency, and the goji berries soft. Put the fruit cubes and the sliced leaves into the bowl. Put enough spoonfuls of yogurt into the mix. Add enough drops of honey. Top with nutty sprinkles if you will. Mix.
Take this not more than 15 minutes after swimming, and make your body happy.
When she was thirteen, Tintin Wulia wished that Peter Pan would lose his shadow in her neighborhood, because she thought that Peter Pan was kinda sexy. Night after night, she would think a happy thought, wishing that Peter would find her if she could fly. Nothing happened – Tintin discovered that Peter had much preferred Wendy.
Two decades and almost seven years later, Tintin is still discovering many things. One, that Peter Pan is a fictional character invented by James Matthew Barrie. Two, that the fact that Peter is fictional doesn’t mean that he’s illusory. She is also discovering that, three, it is not a happy thought that one needs to be able to fly – it is, rather, the combination of a passport and a valid visa. And also, four, that the fact that one needs a passport and a valid visa to be able to fly is just shitty.
