In our days, individuals constantly move their places of living and work across the world. They settle down for a year, a month, or even a week in a new place, only to move afterwards to another place, in another city, another country, or even another continent. Transience has become a way of life for an increasing share of the inhabitants of the global world. There are, of course, various specific reasons for such mobility, but ultimately, what is the attraction of transience? … Arriving? … Leaving? Or the Space In-Between?
With economic globalization we can be in different places of the world without changing location. We can eat New Zealand kiwis, or savor coffee from Brazil no matter where we are. The thrill of discovery has also fallen. Even the more remote civilizations have less to offer through mobility; we saw it before on “National Geographic”! Mobility no longer requires a dramatic change in our habits, nor does it bring the novelty of a new world to explore. In the past, mobility was the search for revelation; nomads sought knowledge, experience, or wealth from new places and cultures. Today, a nomadic life is enriched by becoming more in the path to get there,… wherever! Deleuze and Guattari explain:
“(…) A path is always between two points, but the in-between has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an autonomy and a direction of its own. The life of the nomad is the intermezzo”. [“Smooth and Striated Space” (p.380)]
The “intermezzo” and the experience of traveling the path is the essence of a nomadic life. What drives the nomad is the thrill of the Space In-Between. Transience is the spirituality of the modern nomad!
I walk to remember where I come from. I walk not to forget. I walk to trace a path to follow – Mobile phone Photographs
For the next 6 months I will be in traveling to different places, including: Brussels, Lisbon and Singapore. From November 2007 to April 2008, I plan to use a mobile phone to take daily photographs of the sky at those locations at precisely 10 am C.E.T, using the mobile phone’s alarm to remind me of the shoot. At the end of the project around 180 photographs will be displayed on a wall.
At any point in time, the sky in Singapore is different from the sky in Brussels, itself different from the sky in Lisbon. The differences are not only due to the specificities of each location, but, more importantly to their position on the globe, their latitude and longitude. To emphasize this, all photos will be taken at the same Brussels time (10 am CET), regardless of the local time zone.
This “diary of the sky” will depict the number of days spent in each place: an unchanging storyline of the changes from my traveling. Over the next six months, my location will change constantly, but the sky that I will photograph will always be there. Perhaps photographing the sky will help us to reconsider the importance of a nomadic life. Perhaps a nomadic way of living will guide us to our origins. Beyond doubt it suggests we achieve a certain level of detachment from places on earth when we have transience life style. [Claudia Conduto]
With economic globalization we can be in different places of the world without changing location. We can eat New Zealand kiwis, or savor coffee from Brazil no matter where we are. The thrill of discovery has also fallen. Even the more remote civilizations have less to offer through mobility; we saw it before on “National Geographic”! Mobility no longer requires a dramatic change in our habits, nor does it bring the novelty of a new world to explore. In the past, mobility was the search for revelation; nomads sought knowledge, experience, or wealth from new places and cultures. Today, a nomadic life is enriched by becoming more in the path to get there,… wherever! Deleuze and Guattari explain:
“(…) A path is always between two points, but the in-between has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an autonomy and a direction of its own. The life of the nomad is the intermezzo”. [“Smooth and Striated Space” (p.380)]
The “intermezzo” and the experience of traveling the path is the essence of a nomadic life. What drives the nomad is the thrill of the Space In-Between. Transience is the spirituality of the modern nomad!
I walk to remember where I come from. I walk not to forget. I walk to trace a path to follow – Mobile phone Photographs
For the next 6 months I will be in traveling to different places, including: Brussels, Lisbon and Singapore. From November 2007 to April 2008, I plan to use a mobile phone to take daily photographs of the sky at those locations at precisely 10 am C.E.T, using the mobile phone’s alarm to remind me of the shoot. At the end of the project around 180 photographs will be displayed on a wall.
At any point in time, the sky in Singapore is different from the sky in Brussels, itself different from the sky in Lisbon. The differences are not only due to the specificities of each location, but, more importantly to their position on the globe, their latitude and longitude. To emphasize this, all photos will be taken at the same Brussels time (10 am CET), regardless of the local time zone.
This “diary of the sky” will depict the number of days spent in each place: an unchanging storyline of the changes from my traveling. Over the next six months, my location will change constantly, but the sky that I will photograph will always be there. Perhaps photographing the sky will help us to reconsider the importance of a nomadic life. Perhaps a nomadic way of living will guide us to our origins. Beyond doubt it suggests we achieve a certain level of detachment from places on earth when we have transience life style. [Claudia Conduto]
3 comments:
have you tried to watch video 1 and 2 at the same time... I did it. They fit on my screen. It's interesting. The silence too and the sounds you imagine... On the right there was the blue patches of sky.
al
on the 26th Nov. Nomadic Structures is going to have an exhibition showing to the public what we have been working on. then i can have up to 8 videos all running at the same time... that will be something!
Reading again your post and particularly the first paragraph, I cannot prevent myself from thinking of Pico Iyer's work... You might want to look at some of his work - The Global Soul, Videonights in Kathmandu...
Post a Comment