bootstrapping

bootstrapping

# There is an adjustment period in the morning, waking up from a long night’s sleep — “we haven´t managed to keep a steady sleeping pattern these last months. We feel this constant buzz of the world gears turning, news from a distant place we got to know well, like an inaudible radio transmission, an interference in our growth”. Since last week, the adjustment has got even worse, things around appear as bidimensional patterns. Patterns appeared after my eyes had been slowly exposed to sunlight, it was only after a sudden jerk that I settled my leg on the floor and it all slowly came to normal — “breathe in, breathe out, it´s reality loading itself, just ride the snake. Is this normal? What is “normal” anyway? Are we getting old and is this just our body reacting to more than 30 years of abuse? We don´t regret the use, we've gained experience. Could we have done it in a less emotional and impulsive way? We did what we could with what we had”. I tried to analyze the incident - what are these variables compressing observable life into bidimensional patterns? The light, a right angle projection, multiple projections. Moreover, a projection on an object from a 45 degree angle in a corner may help the mass from a body disappear. I realize that I do not have the right knowledge to go further into this — “Aren´t we supposed to come to this life with all the tools necessary to surpass its adversities? Why do we suddenly have to depend on this accumulation of observable phenomena, probably clouded by diverse obscure agendas, to shed light on what is happening to us?”. 

# I went to see an eye specialist to be sure that everything was all right with my eyes. While I was waiting in queue, waiting for my turn to be examined by the doctor I noticed a small wooden wall separating the waiting room from the doctor´s office —“We like it how it divides space, it is different from those structural ones. It needs only to rely on its modular essence to administer its sentence, might as well just be a line drawn on the floor. No, on second thought the division is needed, they don´t want patients getting demoralized by other devastating cases. We wonder what was the labourer building it thinking at the time, did he feel the job he was doing made more sense than previous construction contracts?” As I get closer to my turn I start hearing the conversation on the other side of the wall, between the doctor and its patient: “The retina in your eye for some reason got distracted and it could be fixed by a minor surgery. After this surgery you will able to see things in order again, in normal size instead of elongated”. 

# At night I went for a fun fair at the university´s playground, a celebration of the smallest day of the year, the winter solstice. In a familiar magic show, there was a girl turning into a snake — “there is something deeply captivating about this little show´s narrative, something ancient that we can´t put our hands on completely, a mythological catharsis of some sort. We know it´s fake and we don´t care, we can ignore that for a couple of seconds and swim in that river of smoke where gravity doesn´t pull us under but propels us in all directions”. The illusion staged a performance with the girl at a distance of approximately 15ft of the audience; this distance was insured by a row of three alternating window sets of variable sizes. There were provocations in the ambiance, something fishy going around temporary sets of the show, layers of gray-blue tarpaulin curtain, windows, dimmed cellophane covered lights, late night winter fog and dust in the air, covered faces, sneezing and coughing... It was the last show of the night, end of the game; once again the girl turned into a snake and then the snake went to bed to sleep. We would eventually never see the snake turning into the girl again, in silence. 

Text produced by Goutam Ghosh & Tiago Bom, (Tiago Bom born in Lisbon, Portugal, lives and works in Oslo holds a MFA from the Oslo Academy of the Arts. In 2013 he was a co-curator with Ayatgali Tuleubek of the Central Asian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale.)