Memoire - Sub Rosa

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FORE
m emory
Think back to your earliest memory. How far into your past
does it stretch? What did you find there, in the oft-overlooked
recesses of your mind? And why is it still there — taking
up valuable space and helping to frame the edges of your
personal worldview?
Inevitably, amidst the dustbin of our history, we find memories both good and bad, fond and repressed, mono and
multi-sensorial. Whatever the form, these recollections, inaccurate as some may be, have long played a role in how we
understand ourselves.
Over time, our memories degrade. They get offloaded to
our devices and journals. They begin to be colored by our
perception and morph into near-truths. Amidst these subtle
changes in our memories, we lose sight of the actual experience and instead grow new, semi-accurate versions of the
facts. Whether this is detrimental or blissful is not for us to
decide. It simply is.
Let’s begin to remember.
Merjin Hos — I’m Ghost
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for epl ay
PLAY
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w i n t e r s o l s t i c e 2 0 15
XXXTROLOGY
Aries
Taurus
Gemini
Cancer
Leo
Virgo
March 21 – April 20
April 21 – May 21
May 22 – June 21
June 22 – July 22
July 23 – August 22
August 23 – September 23
PAST LIFE: Warrior ­— lived through an
era of competition
PAST LIFE: Craftsman ­— lived through an era
attached to luxury and material desires
PAST LIFE: Translator ­— lived through an era
of substantial cultural exchange
PAST LIFE: Dutiful mother ­— lived
through an era which respected tradition
CHALLENGE: Combat the ego and embrace
the power of partnership
CHALLENGE: Remember that mother Earth
is your true security
CHALLENGE: Set aside knowledge and novelty;
it’s time to cultivate your heart
CHALLENGE: Seek to understand and
nourish yourself
PAST LIFE: Nobility ­— lived through an
era which valued elegance, manners and a
dignified temperament
PAST LIFE: Monk ­— lived through an era
where personal concerns were set aside for a
higher purpose
CHALLENGE: Find your own sense of purpose
COUNT ON THEM: To stand up for you
COUNT ON THEM: For their well-developed
feminine sensibilities
COUNT ON THEM: To know how to talk
to people
COUNT ON THEM: To understand you
COUNT ON THEM: To keep proper decorum
CHALLENGE: Resist being the helper; pursue a
broader wealth of knowledge and experience
DON’T: Rush them
DON’T: Give them restrictions
DON’T: Underestimate them
DON’T: Ignore them
CHARMING: Responds to sex and gifts with
equal enthusiasm
CHARMING: Knocks everything over
CHARMING: Is a slut for Doritos
CHARMING: They definitely did not wake
up like this
DON’T: Get in their way
CHARMING: Learns a whole rap song
LOVEMAKING: Unabashed, even aggressive
LOOKING FOR: Instant gratification ­— omit
the preamble, get straight to business
LOVEMAKING: Eager to please, but not
interested in being the leader
LOOKING FOR: You to tease their sense of
vulnerability and taboo
LOVEMAKING: Seeks love in the form of
performance and applause
DON’T: Even. Just don’t.
CHARMING: Is secretly a kinky freak
LOVEMAKING: Technique is the Virgo specialty
LOOKING FOR: A little drama to stay aroused
LOOKING FOR: Unhurried, undaunted,
uncomplicated tantric sex
BUT MOSTLY: Wants to feel everything
BUT MOSTLY: They can turn it up on a dime
BUT MOSTLY: They tenderly and passionately
declare love
BUT MOSTLY: Have oversized hearts and
egos to match
BUT MOSTLY: Consistency is actually a huge
turn-on
PRACTICE RELEASING: Hedonism
PRACTICE RELEASING: Control
PRACTICE RELEASING: Caretaking
PRACTICE RELEASING: Attention-seeking
TRY EMBRACING: Mystery
TRY EMBRACING: No expectations
TRY EMBRACING: Teaching ‘em to fish
TRY EMBRACING: Collaboration
PRACTICE RELEASING: Doing things the
hard way
DO IT: In a stairway
DO IT: In a taxi
DO IT: On a bearskin rug
DO IT: In a theme park
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Becomes a comet
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Starts a new one
LIFE AFTER DEATH: The popular clique
in heaven
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Starts a new life as a god
Libra
Scorpio
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Aquarius
Pisces
September 24 – October 23
October 24 – November 22
November 23 – December 21
December 22 – January 20
January 21 – February 19
February 20 – March 20
PAST LIFE: Poet; lived through an art-centric era,
where people really paid attention to love and beauty
PAST LIFE: Medieval alchemist; lived through
an era in which people attempted to divine the
secrets of the universe
PAST LIFE: Explorer; lived through an era
defined by a pioneering spirit
PAST LIFE: Native tribesman ­— lived through
a period of family decline, where you were looked
to for help in rebuilding community
PAST LIFE: Dreamer ­— lived through the
prehistorical space-age civilization of Atlantis
PAST LIFE: Healer ­— lived through an era
in which a return to nature was promoted as
immensely valuable for human development
PRACTICE RELEASING: That winnertakes-all mentality
TRY EMBRACING: Spontaneity
DO IT: Under the bleachers
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Rules hell
CHALLENGE: Retain that artistic spirit without
over-valorizing your own creative ideals
COUNT ON THEM: To make you feel special
DON’T: Spook them
CHARMING: Googles everything
LOVEMAKING: Lavish, lyrical and easily seduced
LOOKING FOR: Someone to experiment with
BUT MOSTLY: Talk is cheap
PRACTICE RELEASING: Taking the comfortable path
CHALLENGE: Being upfront and keeping
your core values clear
COUNT ON THEM: To naturally interrogate
the nature of things
DON’T: Lie to them
CHARMING: Laughs at the most inappropriate time
LOVEMAKING: Committed to pleasure, and
famously unsqueamish
LOOKING FOR: You to play it a little aloof
TRY EMBRACING: The rewards of risk
BUT MOSTLY: Bondage and blindfolds
DO IT: On a cop car
PRACTICE RELEASING: Strategy
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Stays on Earth as a ghost
TRY EMBRACING: Simplicity
DO IT: Underwater
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Self-elected prince/
princess of the underworld
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CHALLENGE: Put down roots and blossom
COUNT ON THEM: To make you laugh
DON’T: Bore them
CHARMING: Is really hungry but too lazy to
make their own food
LOVEMAKING: Cinematic and bizarrely
self-voyeuristic
LOOKING FOR: Unrestrained and guilt-free
spontaneous sexual adventures
BUT MOSTLY: Will try anything once
PRACTICE RELEASING: Wanderlust
TRY EMBRACING: One thing at a time
DO IT: On a ski lift
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Rules Heaven
CHALLENGE: Let go of caution and
responsibility ­— explore methods of release
COUNT ON THEM: To cheer you up
DON’T: Stress them out
CHARMING: Possesses a serious sense of duty
LOVEMAKING: Sometimes you have to give
them a massage between the legs to get them to
sit still
LOOKING FOR: Complete domination
BUT MOSTLY: In it for the long haul
PRACTICE RELEASING: Cool detachment
TRY EMBRACING: Homespun sensuality
DO IT: On a boardroom table
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Becomes a planet
CHALLENGE: Maintain your freedom of
thought and behavior
COUNT ON THEM: To be weird with you
DON’T: Pretend with them
CHARMING: Believes in aliens
LOVEMAKING: Friendly, quirky lovers
motivated by mental constructs
LOOKING FOR: Just a little bit of sleaze
BUT MOSTLY: Use your atomic energy to
serve mankind
PRACTICE RELEASING: The need to be liked
TRY EMBRACING: Self-expression
TRY EMBRACING: Creative freedom
DO IT: On someone else’s kitchen counter
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Demons seem like they
have a lot of fun?
CHALLENGE: Beware of easy charm
and seduction
COUNT ON THEM: For amusing banter
DON’T: Fake it for them
CHARMING: Will make you snacks
LOVEMAKING: They like a little pain with
their pleasure
LOOKING FOR: You to dive deep into the
pool of fantasies
BUT MOSTLY: Can be the boy, the girl,
both, neither
DO IT: At your enemy’s wedding
PRACTICE RELEASING: The rosecolored glasses
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Moves galaxies
TRY EMBRACING: Reading the fine print
DO IT: In a bounce house
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Is the only survivor
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nata l i e si m s
LOOKING FOR: Mood
LOOKING FOR: You to tell them clearly what
you want to do with them
BUT MOSTLY: Charismatic playmates
x x xtrology
LOVEMAKING: A lavish exploration of their
sensual self
LOVEMAKING: Must be won over verbally
before mouths are used for anything else
COUNT ON THEM: To call you on your bullshit
l a petite mort
w i n t e r s o l s t i c e 2 0 15
Standing in the ocean, you feel the currents of the water
gently rocking you back and forth. You see your brain, and
wrapped around it is the cancer. You cup your hands beneath
the water’s surface and douse yourself. As the water washes
over your head, you see it burn off a portion of the cancer
cells. With each rinse of the ocean, more and more of the
tumor dissolves away. Finally, the tumor is completely gone
leaving behind your brain, healthy and clean.
You are standing on a beach. You feel the grains of sand rubbing against your feet, beneath
your heels, and between your toes. The sound of waves rolling against the sand fades
into that of swaying trees. A gentle breeze presses against your body, bringing with it the
sweet, salty scent of the ocean.
We watch a lot of movies during the day, but it’s almost impossible to
tell whether he likes them or not. We’re halfway through one of Sir
Ben’s diatribes in Sexy Beast when my mom gets home from work. I
can tell that this is not the movie that Mom wants setting the tone for
the evening. “Dad, we can finish this later.” He looks confused. Maybe
this was one he liked?
“Tek-shee!” We grab a cab and jump in. As we ride to the hospital in
Songpa-Gu, the drive slowly makes me drowsy. Cab drivers in Seoul
are mostly trustworthy, but falling asleep in the backseat of a taxicab
is an invitation to get ripped off. I know that my dad won’t be able to
keep the driver in line, but I also can’t for the life of me keep my eyes
open. As I drift into a deep sleep, I desperately tell my dad to watch
the driver, and he responds, “Okay.” I wake up as the cab pulls into
the hospital and find that the fare is the same as always; 12,000 won.
Dad took care of it.
When we arrive at his office, it’s clear that no one knows quite how to
address my father. His mere presence is encouraging, but his appearance — how different he looks — is unsettling. For one, he has gained
a bit of weight, or maybe everything is just swollen. And then there’s
the gray newsboy cap he’s started wearing to cover his shaven head
and the prominent surgical scar. Either way his staff is determined to
take this as a sign of good things to come. The design staff enthusiastically greet him as if nothing were different. My dad responds with
a nervous grin.
Fresh bread for breakfast. If it was a particularly grueling day at the
office for Dad, there would be freshly baked bread in the morning;
he liked to take his stress out on the dough. The crumpled up bread
recipe had earned a permanent place on our fridge. Dad would get
home late, usually 1 or 2 in the morning, pull out the flour, add the
water, salt, and yeast, knead the hell out of it and let it rise overnight.
It would have been in and out of the oven before I woke up to find it
waiting for me on the dining table. A bit of cheese, maybe butter, was
all it ever needed.
“Why are we here?” I wonder to myself. We’re either early or late. No
one knows what to do with us, my dad who should be running this
place and me, a teenager who should be in class somewhere. Mr. Kim
finds us wandering around and pulls us into the conference room.
Mr. Kim, the man who handles the logistics of my dad’s design store,
explains to me that we need to be there in order to show one of our
import suppliers just how sick Dad is. After some silent waiting, the
supplier arrives and the conversation very quickly escalates into
a violent shouting match. Apparently, we owe him more money. I
abruptly find myself separating the two men as their shouting gives
way to shoving.
You move toward the water. As you draw closer, the small
waves roll over your feet and slide back into the ocean.
You continue to walk toward the water. Your feet are now
4
When we learned that he had 6 to 8 months to live, my two brothers
and I decided that we should do whatever we needed to help my mom
take care of him and to be able to share his final moments. For me,
that meant putting off college and moving back home to Korea. For
us three brothers it meant sharing a bedroom, with a weekly rotation
of who got top bunk. This was our final chance to all be together.
When his business partners insisted that he stay at home — weeks
after he lost his ability to form coherent sentences — we were the ones
who had to keep him there. We had to physically block the door, while
he tried to push through. It took him many days to fully accept that
he was no longer needed and that he could only make things worse
by going to the office, a crushing realization for someone who defined
himself by the work he did. He had no hobbies and certainly couldn’t
pick up any new ones now.
Routines, however, found their place in our daily lives. Mom would be
with him in the morning. The three of us would take turns helping him
bathe. We helped him get dressed. Meds with every meal. Afternoon
walk around the apartment complex and a cappuccino from our
very own espresso machine. Dinner together and the evening would
end with one of the three of us performing the guided meditation.
Visualizing away my dad’s cancer seemed as likely as anything else to
be the most effective treatment.
Lucas Chung — Untitled
I look around and my dad is nowhere to be found. The supplier storms
out of the office. Was this what Mr. Kim wanted? Did we achieve our
desired effect? Somehow the way the meeting ended suggests otherwise. I find my dad looking through cupboards in the breakroom. He
finds what he’s looking for: a large can of Folger’s. This can is important to him. He tries to steal it by stuffing it into to his shirt, which is
already snug.
When we started performing the guided meditation — one of the few
really useful suggestions we gleaned from the bookshelf of cancer
books we bought — it was strange, unnatural and awkward. Even
though we were never sure whether it had really worked, we could see
that he liked it. The story shifted a little each night, but the essence
stayed the same. Months after we’d started doing it, we realized that
each of us had a completely different narrative. One of us had our dad
holding his brain in his hands, while mine had a possibly disembodied brain walking into the ocean.
“What are you doing?!” I say, panicked. He realizes the can won’t fit,
and puts it back.
As I recall the time we spent during that year, I find the meditation
has formed an anchor in my mind that ties together all of the insanity
we witnessed. These nightly meditations became some of the most
meaningful moments each of us spent with our dad. Before he had
cancer, it was hard to find any time to have meaningful conversation with him. It was a daily reprise that gave us perspective beyond
the neverending fires we had to keep putting out. In addition to the
memories of those little catastrophes, we also have the memories we
crafted together, the shared yet individualized dream that we made
every night together with our dad. I stood on the beach with my dad,
and I walked into the ocean with him.
“Cooking is all about timing.” Stir fry was a specialty of my dad’s.
Every time I find our beloved giant wok rusted in someone else’s
kitchen, I think of him. Marinate the meat. Chop all the vegetables
into uniformly sized pieces. Measure and set aside sauces and condiments. Start by heating the oil. Add the garlic. Then the meat. Add
the heartier vegetables like carrots and cabbage, giving them their
moment. Next the vegetables that cook faster. As the pieces finish
cooking, slide them up the sides of the wok making space for new
ones closer to the heat. Serve immediately. Dad was obsessive about
technique. If the process is performed correctly, everything else
falls into place.
5
luca s chu ng
completely submerged. With each step you take, the water
rises higher and higher up your thighs, waist and chest until
you are submerged up to your neck. The water had felt cold
at first as you entered, but it now feels warm and comforting.
My dad and I are on the way to the hospital for his weekly check-in.
He can walk slowly, and sometimes he can participate in a conversation with one-word responses, but overall he’s a shadow of his former
self. Someone needs to be with him always. I could say that helping
him bathe, dressing him or keeping a full stock of Depends makes it
clear that our roles have flipped, but actually those brief moments
where he feels like my old dad are what most remind me things
have changed.
you a r e sta n di ng on a be ac h
I remember my dad working a lot. Late nights every night, and maybe
he would take Sunday off. Most of the time we spent together was
at the breakfast table, Bahá’i gatherings, vacations or our Sunday
evening dinners with his mother. I wish I could say more about how
he ran his design agency. He was different in each place. When
he was at work, he spoke Korean, and when he was with us, it was
English. What aspects of his character were common to both? Did his
silly sense of humor translate? Was he funnier in Korean?
luca s chu ng
you a r e sta n di ng on a be ac h
YOU ARE
STANDING ON
A BEACH
l a petite mort
G
H
O
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S
T
P U E B L O
ghost pu eblo
ghost pu eblo
m a rgot a n d c l ay coff e y
m a rgot a n d c l ay coff e y
Memory Through Mirage
In the desert, things appear differently.
A sunrise hovering eternally on the horizon blinds you.
The wind shapes a suffocating sandstorm that envelopes you.
The Ghost Pueblo is a constructed mirage that uses the
extreme elements of the desert landscape to test us.
It hovers between real and illusion; a memory of a
place or people, projected by our mind’s eye.
6
The Ghost Pueblo is an installation to honor our country’s ancient
civilizations and the Native American cultures that keep them alive.
Many native cultures have been marginalized in society’s collective
memory. Yet they hold a profound past that deserves to be resurfaced
and retold. Their memory is one where the natural world is God and
home is built of its elements. The Ghost Pueblo uses the natural world
to conjure that memory, first, through illusion, and then through
discovery and reflection.
The Anasazi or “Ancient Outsiders” are one of the biggest mysteries of our native cultures. After establishing sophisticated agricultural systems and building complex cliffside pueblos — some still
in existence — they vanished entirely. Many legends live on in their
memory to reason how or why they disappeared. One belief says the
Anasazi have crossed over into a new, fourth dimension of time and
space; wherein our ruins and artifacts are, for them, complete and
whole communities and tools.
Three different native cultures have shaped the Ghost Pueblo’s image.
The Hopi are some of the oldest native people still settled. They were
often called the “Pueblo People” by Spanish settlers who found their
large-scale villages fascinating. They are intensely spiritual people
who undertake a complex series of annual ceremonies involving
hundreds of Kachina spirits — invisible life forces they believe deeply
in. There is a saying in the Hopi culture that explains their unique and
ancient wisdom as a keen and ever-present openness. They claim that
the “door on top of their heads” remains the most open, giving them
an ability to access meaning and purpose.
The Paiute people of the Black Rock Desert were nomads. They did not
live in pueblos, but they were known as a moral and peaceful people
with few possessions and a strong belief in the interconnectedness of
all things in the universe. It was the Northern Paiute spiritual leader,
Wovoka, who began a new religious movement that was eventually
incorporated into nearly all Native American belief systems. Called
the Ghost Dance, it is held that proper practice of the dance would
reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead
to fight on their behalf and, ultimately, bring peace, prosperity, and
unity to native people across the region.
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l a petite mort
Building a Ruin
A Place of Reflection
The Ghost Pueblo is therefore a modest, symbolic temple built to
remember these peoples. It is an imperfect and eroding place of our
collective American past; our memories.
The Ghost Pueblo experience relies on its natural desert environment.
It’s the hazy burning sunrise; it’s the blurred edge of the horizon and
the chaos of a sandstorm; it’s the shimmer in a heat wave.
A pueblo is a desert dwelling that came into being when native
cultures left nomadic beginnings and developed sustainable agricultural systems. These new agrarian communities were defined by these
geometric adobe structures. Where pueblos are geometries made of
the desert from the desert, the Ghost Pueblo is a geometric reflection
of the desert, envisioned to be a space built for meditation on the past
and its roots grounded in the natural world. The Ghost Pueblo is built
of reflective surfaces. Set in the distance at the edge of the deep desert,
it operates as a transitional structure wherein one can move from high
stimulation to calm contemplation and natural terrain.
When approaching the Ghost Pueblo, the discovery that the mirage is
real and not imagined extends our perception of reality and heightens
memory. It is an illusion come to life; a pueblo on the horizon of the
desert, creating a place for reflection on the natural world and those
who first lived here.
w i n t e r s o l s t i c e 2 0 15
In a talk by Hawane Rios I once heard, she asked the group to become
the place that raised us each. Do you know the name of the wind that
raised you? What is the name of the waters that raised you? What
is the name of your mountain? What is the name of your land that
raised you? Who are the first people who lived on that land?
One of the pueblo’s most defining characteristics is the kiva, a central,
sunken chamber used for spiritual ceremonies and religious rituals.
A temple within a dwelling, the kiva has many variations, but most
These are the questions the Ghost Pueblo asks of its visitors.
ghost pu eblo
ghost pu eblo
m a rgot a n d c l ay coff e y
m a rgot a n d c l ay coff e y
can be defined as an enclosed, circular room with a built-in bench
and a packed earth floor (although some floors were hollow, perhaps
for foot drums). Many are underground with an entrance through a
roof hatchway by ladder, a design that may have originated from a
pithouse structure. All kivas have a fire pit at the center and a vent in
the wall to provide fresh air, as well as a small hole in the floor, called a
Sipapu, which symbolizes the portal through which ancient ancestors
first emerged into the present world. The walls are often decorated
with murals of hidden symbolic significance.
In the middle of the night,
reflecting the dark skies, the
Ghost Pueblo is again a home
to the people of the desert.
The fire pit glows and the
Ghost Dance beats on.
The Ghost Pueblo’s expression of the kiva is a central space in open air.
Instead of underground, the pueblo’s ruinous aesthetic as well as its
built geometry is continued in this open space. It is an unexpressed
cube symbolizing a lost past, a collective memory worth saving.
Within this cubic void, a circular kiva with a glowing firepit and
symbolic Sipapu is impressed.
In this spirit, the Ghost Pueblo provides a shelter for group meditation
in the desert.
Here is where the Hopi perform their annual ceremonies.
Here is where the Paiute dance around the fire pit.
Here is where the Anasazi paint across the walls.
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l a petite mort
w i n t e r s o l s t i c e 2 0 15
ONCE,
IT WAS A ROCK
Once, it was a rock,
held fast in the blackness,
undistinguished from the earthy mass.
Once, it was a rock,
high beyond the others,
standing guard in a hostile land.
They too were rocks,
more precious than most,
sought by those in unknown lands.
j o n o ’c o n n e r
o n c e , i t wa s a r o c k
Once, they were rocks,
swift and free across the crust,
destined to roam eternally.
It had been a giant,
bathing deep in a cool murk,
until a rock struck another,
and Death clung to its fatty bulk,
only to ease, once it was a rock.
It was still a rock,
though crushed and sieved,
pressed and creased,
beveled and burnished.
And it was still a rock,
cradled in fleshy folds,
when an ancestral urge,
demanded its safe return.
And it was still a rock,
cold and still among the others,
pining for the time,
when it had no name,
and it was just a rock.
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l a petite mort
w i n t e r s o l s t i c e 2 0 15
LIVING THE
DREAM
liv ing the dr ea m
Through my twenties and thirties, I became increasingly fascinated
by the content and narrative of my dreams. I have subconsciously
learned, through intense and upsetting dreams, techniques to
exhibit control from within my sleep state. Today, I have found I can
exercise enough control to refuse a nightmare. To see that a dream
is moving in a direction of fear and anxiety and take appropriate
charge to land the out-of-control plane, or pull myself out of any
deepening hole with a well-positioned rope ladder. I’ve unlocked
a rich repository of dream-state stories and acquired the freedom
that lies in the ability to govern them. They now serve as a personal
treasure box of curated and recorded fantasy.
By exercising this heightened cognizance, dreaming has even helped
me in my professional and personal life. Professionally, dream
control is helpful for the rehearsal of scenarios. My dreams become
meeting preruns, allowing me to test approaches and problemsolve. Unleashing creativity and letting my imagination fly is one
of the most invigorating and relaxing dream states. I also find
myself most creatively inspired after a night of wild dreaming; my
morning showers become my studio for generating ideas I use
throughout the day.
Perhaps the most visceral link between my
memory and my dream-state occurs when I use
a most personal exercise of control to heal from
intense grief. Through the construction of my
dreams, I am able to connect with those who
have left life and, once again, to feel the closeness
and comfort of conversations held with them.
These moments forge an intimate pathway from
my deep memory and the pain of the past, and
comfort me.
Petra Börner — Back Room, Memory
There is a difference between sleeping and dreaming while asleep.
Sleeping can be described as the lack of conscious awareness of
the outside world, meaning the large portions of the brain that are
typically responsible for receiving and interpreting external signals
are deactivated during this time. However, studies of dreaming in a
specific ‘state of sleep’ have revealed enhanced brain activity during
this time.
This quote from Harvard University psychiatrist John Allan Hobson
who studied dream consciousness resonates with me.
“Dreaming may be our most creative
conscious state, one in which the chaotic,
spontaneous recombination of cognitive
elements produces novel configurations
of information: new ideas. While many,
or even most, of these ideas may be
nonsensical, if even a few of its fanciful
products are truly useful, our dream time
will not have been wasted” (1999).
As human beings, our state of consciousness is constructed through
primary and secondary conditions. It could be said that the primary
consciousness (the ability to integrate observed events with memory
to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the
world surrounding) could be active within the dream-state without
external stimulation. If this is true then we can have conscious awareness of our surroundings in dreams, perception of space, environment and emotion. In terms of our secondary consciousness (being
self-reflective, looking back on the past, imagining the future and
accessing more abstract thoughts), this is more frequently present
in states of lucid dreaming wherein the individual is able to exhibit
some level of control.
Knowing and understanding this, I continue to ponder my nightly
adventures. I feel these experiences of memory contrasted with the
sense of immediate presence are more than electrical brain impulses,
pulling random thoughts and images from my memory then playing
them back in random sequence. They are beautiful and authentic
memories of a time and place, but also moments of immediate now,
curated by the magic of subconscious.
One day I hope to better understand the relationship between the
emotional memory and the rational present. For now, the answer
must remain a wonderful and mystical biological secret, guarded
deep within the walls of my memory, and I will continue to navigate
these adventures with curious and active participation.
Hvass&Hannibal — Nostalgi
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13
est h er d ow n ton
Since I was 10 years old, all of my dreams remain securely vaulted
in memory.
est h er d ow n ton
I have suffered a concussion through a particularly active ‘dream
swim’ through stormy waters. I have been awoken by my husband
who tolerated a face slap as I contended with a cloud of dream bats.
liv ing the dr ea m
As far back as my memory will take me, I have dreamt, and
remembered, a vast catalog of wonderful, curious and terrifying
dreams. I seem to have a strong propensity for dream recall. In
my dream history I have fought in great battles, survived plane
crashes, swum oceans and lived to tell.
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I open the drawers of memory,
One…then another
I remember the horse-drawn carts…
And the sellers of prickly pears…
And the cafés of al-Rubwa
I remember the Damascene houses
With their copper doorknobs;
And their ceilings decorated with glazed tiles
And their interior courtyards
That remind you of descriptions of heaven…
r i m a m a ssa sat i
Place, space and time are all fleeting things. They are ingredients of
memory. And though we may try to hold onto these elements, things
will fade; and time will change things. Gradual change is welcome,
but forceful change is not. Now, as Syria is being ripped apart by
brutal war, many are traumatized and nearly two million people have
fled, seeking refuge in foreign countries — an unwelcome change.
As buildings crumble, memories of places that no longer exist will
remain. Explore the memories of Saleh, Ahmad, and Dylan — individuals who remember a place that no longer exists.
a pl ac e t h at no l onge r e x i sts
— Dylan
– Nizar Qabbani
The Build
Rose Jam
I was a quiet teenager who grew up in the ‘burbs of New Orleans.
In the summer, I would usually stay home and play Sega or build
jumbo jets out of Legos. However, the summer of 1995 was unlike
any other. My parents bought me a ticket to visit my family in
Damascus, Syria. I had never met my Syrian family and found
out quickly that I had a lot of them. When I met my youngest
uncle who was only 14 years older than me, I felt I had met Rico
Suave, himself. He was everything I wanted to be, a successful and
witty veterinarian-turned-businessman — a driven man who care
for two things: taking cared of animals and making money. He
bought and owned a quaint chicken farm on the skirts of Mezzah.
It needed to be fixed up and I was appointed his right-hand man,
helping him build the farm. Now, instead of building with Legos,
I was building with bricks. It was rewarding. Once the work was
done we would prepare tea and play cards. It was in these moments
that I felt understood. It was within the walls I helped build that I
came to realize my confidence. In 2014, I received news that the
farm was shelled. The place that played such a definitive role in
my personal growth was now rubble. Last I heard, my uncle had
bought a broom and was ready to build again.
When I was 12 years old, there was nothing like going to my aunt’s
house in the countryside of Aleppo. We spent afternoons picking
roses and making jam. The glutton in me was impatient; I would
tickle my tongue with the velvety petals and eat them raw. Once we
gathered enough flowers we would return to my aunt’s home, an old
romantic Syrian courtyard house. We set the flowers on an unstable mosaic table and sorted them, picking the petals. The fragrance
tangoed throughout the space. In the center of the house was the
so-called forbidden fountain. The kids in the family were always
tempted to jump in and splash around. Once grown-ups were out
of sight we gave into our temptation. And when the sun went to bed,
so did we. My cousins and I would spread our mattresses on the cool
marble ground and star-gaze. We were told that if we saw a shooting
star, it was a genie coming to take us away. Once everyone had fallen
asleep I would look up at the stars, never trying to count them, but
instead trying to talk to them — I let go and simply looked. My aunt’s
house was looted and later hit by a shell. I didn’t want to believe it.
Her home was a memory that brought me comfort. I still have that
rickety table, but rose jam will never taste the same.
— Saleh
14
On the long drive to Palmyra, we stopped at the Baghdad Café,
essentially a tourist gift shop — not a restaurant, like I had hoped.
We got to talking with the owner, and before I knew it, he had set
a table in a back room with a delicious brunch of scrambled eggs,
olives, cheese, bread, and of course, tea. There’s nothing quite
like Syrian hospitality. So after a satisfying meal, we headed to
Palmyra, which is unlike any ancient Roman site I have been to.
As a student of Roman history, I’ve been to quite a few. I specifically recall walking in an underground room and noticing how
one man depicted on a tomb was dressed in a Roman tunic and
yet was wearing Persian footwear — a unique mix of cultures. I
remember the incredible temple of Ba’al with well-preserved wall
paintings, another display of the cross-cultural city. As I walked
back to the van I looked around at the warm sculptures. Their
eyes bade me farewell. It had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t
be able to visit again. Now, this historic ancient city of amber
stones that once rose out of the Syrian Desert is a casualty of war.
r i m a m a ssa sat i
a pl ac e t h at no l onge r e x i sts
A PLACE THAT NO
LONGER EXISTS
Amber Stones
— Ahmad
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H U M A N S :
THE NEW GOLDFISH
saving as memory. However, we
cannot accept a patent denial of the
experiences that create our cultural
memory, because our experiences
become our truth. Accept or reject;
they happen and inform us, and
our families, friends and peers.
As a producer of all media types,
I am not advocating for a world
in which the current landscape
is suppressed, censored or otherwise edited by mandate. What
is being suggested is an educational position that is designed to
inform the coming generation on
the twin skills of media production and comprehension. In other
words: how can we determine for
ourselves, through critical thought,
what is worth saving and sharing to
create memories and culture?
The human brain contains four
lobes, one of which is the temporal
lobe. The temporal lobe connects
long-term memory and is the
primary engine for the senses of
sight and sound — components
used to accept and process the
information that we convert into
memories. Goldfish, needless to say,
have a less complex system.
h va s s & h a n n i b a l
The bedrock of human cultures
is built on sharing, the trigger of
empathy. Sharing can be manifested
in language; in art, music or literature, or customs. What is familiar to a group is what binds them
and memories are the root of
this. Without them, we would
suffer from a fate similar to that
of a goldfish — living a completely
present existence empowered by
the blissful ignorance of living only
in the “now.”
a ddi s on o’de a
hum a ns: th e n ew goldfish
We are in the winter of our existence-long affair with memories.
det u tilr egn elige sin n
We are in the winter of our existence-long affair with memories.
The democratization of production
technology is what has created the
onus of shared responsibility in
media. Recording and publishing
into the public record is no longer
the strict purview of the few. We
are all broadcasters now. And, as
such, we operate with a similar mentality; educate or entertain while
building and maintaining an audience.
Forgetting
our
long-term
Jules Julien — Blackout
memories happens when synaptic connections in our neural network are weakened or, more critically,
when a new network is created and is superimposed upon the existing
one. Throughout civilization, many customs and traditions have passed
through memory as part of this natural cycle of evolution. Although the
exponential expansion of media in the last two decades could be dealing
cultures a coup-de-grace that we never expected.
The operative difference between the individual and the business is the
modus operandi. A lion’s share of individuals are not programming for
profit, so there is no onus to appease advertisers or distributors. Therefore,
the standards of quality are rarely upheld creating the detritus. We will all
bear witness to moments in our lives, whether they are globally profound,
or profoundly personal, it does not matter.
How can culture die if we are producing more cultural artifacts than
ever? Simply said; quantity now far exceeds quality. New neural networks
are at the tsunami-level. And in our want to consume, we have not been
educated to think critically about modern media. Participation has
become unavoidable as we swim like goldfish in the sea of social media
and cable bundles.
There is an obligation to ensure that we all have the knowledge to make
a worthwhile contribution to the global brain so our memories are
accurate, worthwhile, informative, (hopefully) entertaining, and, most of
all, timeless.
Given the detritus of photographic and design-based media, it is easy
to argue that very little of what is produced is worth sharing, much less
Winter, after all, is but a season in the cycle of life.
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AUTOMATIC
WRITING
These writings came about through my participation in group-meditative exercises of slow movement. While doing these exercises I was
in a state of deep silence, and I noticed that when focusing on moving
my hands extremely slowly, my right hand looked like it belonged to
an ancient master. I wondered what it would be like to write down
questions while my hand had this ancient quality.
au t o m a t i c w r i t i n g
These memories included my connection to Ancient Egypt. When I
traveled to Egypt and went inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, everything felt familiar. I sat on the ground of the King’s Chamber, leaned
against a wall, and felt myself move through the wall and become part
of an elaborate procession in Ancient Egypt.
pa m e l a k r a f t
Over time, I began to have memories of ancient knowledge. I call them
memories rather than imaginings because memories have deep roots.
When you recollect something in its entirety, it has three dimensions.
It has an appearance, sound, even a sense of smell. It’s something you
have participated in.
pa m e l a k r a f t
I had crossed a line into this other realm, this other reality. I was able
to access a deeper intelligence, a channel to my ancient mind. I believe
I was given access to the highest form of myself, the oracle acting
as a bridge.
au t o m a t i c w r i t i n g
The questions that arose had the quality of questions you might pose
to an oracle such as, “What is the space between life and death?” and
“Will my ailing father live or die?” This quality is reflected in the way
these writings were written, not only in the content of the words but
also in their appearance. The writings happened suddenly and looked
very beautiful to me.
I believe I remembered my life beyond the veil of time; I was no longer
limited by my linear experience within it. I understood that my life
history went well beyond this lifetime.
I believe that these writings are records
of conversations with eternal memory, a
memory that is circular, stretching into the
past as well as into the future.
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au t o m a t i c w r i t i n g
pa m e l a k r a f t
au t o m a t i c w r i t i n g
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A FULL
CIRCLE MOMENT
a fu ll circle mom ent
This show officially launched the opening of Rough Trade in
Williamsburg as not only a record store, but also a music venue.
Every fan dreams of this moment. Earlier that evening, while waiting
in line to get in, I saw Charles Bradley step out of his gypsy cab, and
cheerfully say, “Hello!” as he walked by. He spun around and with
the biggest smile swooned, “Hey, baby girl.” During his encore, he
began to shake every hand in the front row, and when he arrived at
mine, he did a double take, remembering me from earlier that night.
He blew me two kisses while walking backwards, hand-to-heart
beaming at the crowd.
Phosphorescent
Acoustic ballads washed the crowd with powerful serenity. Seemed
fitting to hone in on the incense and faint blur of flowers behind.
The stage was transformed into an altar for the senses. A spiritual
journey into sound enraptured you in an immersive all-senses-on
experience. No photo can do this acoustic performance justice. I
had never imagined a stage coming to life like this one. The smell of
incense and flowers mixed with dim romantic lighting carried just as
much weight as the music.
Big Freedia
One of the most exciting shows to shoot, for obvious reasons. It’s difficult to assume only the role of photographer with all that twerk happening onstage.
Brooklyn Bowl turned into an open invitation for all to join in on a hot-and-heavy love fest.
Anamamanguchi
Through a series of meanderings, I landed on what seemed like richer
territory, a marriage if you will, of two creative dabblings near and
dear to my heart from an early age: music and photography. Eager
for new experiences, I chased that excitement by wiping the dust off
my DSLR and getting to it.
I’ve been a serial creative dabbler for as long as I can remember. As
an artist, I’ve courted a range of creative outlets always in the hopes
that I’ll find “the one.” Time and time again, I’ve come back to creating music and composing images.
There was only one rule growing up: you must play a musical instrument. It took me a few years of wandering the keys of a piano and the
strings of a viola to finally land on the drums — an instrument that is
sonically inconvenient having grown up in a sleepy suburban town
where the loudest thing you’ll hear after eight o’clock at night are
crickets and maybe the occasional barking dog. As soon as we — the
drums and I — got into a solid groove, I went away to college. Sadly,
the drums stayed behind.
What happened over the next eight months happens to all of us in
due time — a reconnection to the source, that thing your memory
holds and carries, that thing that never gets away. It’s a subconscious
layer of memory that sits deep in our DNA, a place that spans past
and present — home. And herein lies the profundity of memory. If we
pay close enough attention, it points to our most natural and honest
connection to self.
This show packed a raucous crowd of sweaty, tattooed movers
and shakers. The energy was all about moshing, crowd surfing and
constant body-to-body contact, feeding the equally feisty musicians.
The whole experience was much like being inside a videogame. I
climbed onstage mostly to escape the unwanted weight of sweaty
crowd surfers. Being onstage was not as scary as I thought; in fact, I
loved it so much that I walked behind the drummer to get a different
vantage point. At that moment, he turned around and stared for a few
seconds too long.
Reggie Watts
There is nothing this musical genius cannot do. With Reggie, you just
don’t know what you’re going to get and when. I remember crawling
on all fours through the attentive crowd as a couple of other cameras
wove in and out of aisles. Fact: You’ll never capture a bad photo of
Reggie Watts. A silent film of Reggie’s face would be just as entertaining as his music. You can’t see it from here, but he was wearing
an oversized sweater with black Santa’s face on it. So Reggie.
These photographic meanderings reveal memories of my youth
come full circle.
This is not a story of love lost, but rather one of finding an eternal
passion that has simply had to take a backseat as life has become ever
more complex. I moved on, but never far, from music.
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t i f fa n y w e n
t i f fa n y w e n
a fu ll circle mom ent
Charles Bradley
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a mode r n day m e m e n to mor i
stephen di x
a mode r n day m e m e n to mor i
A MODERN DAY
MEMENTO
MORI
Thinking back to my school days, I can clearly remember how much I’d enjoy practicing my handwriting.
Carefully perfecting uniform rows of alphabet letters was my idea
of heaven. Around this same time, my grandfather (Bernard) introduced me to his workshop — the place where he’d hand paint signs
for local shops and businesses. Inspired by his genius for typeform
(and perhaps the heady aroma of paint thinner), I began practicing
my penmanship with increased enthusiasm.
As the years have gone by, I’ve kept a notebook of interesting things
that have happened to me. Things I’ve experienced, heard or seen.
Over time, my note-taking has gathered momentum and my style
has evolved. To date, my handwritten recollections fill several dozen
notebooks — the latter of which have become increasingly intricate.
Reproduced here are a few of my most recent pages. I hope you enjoy
reading them as much as I did writing them. If you do, keep a beady
eye out for my soon-to-be-published book and accompanying art
exhibition. It’s going to be nothing short of Funkenskatt.
When my grandfather passed away at the turn of the century, I started
keeping a book. I don’t really know why — maybe it was permanency
I was seeking: the thought of leaving something lasting behind, a
memento of some sort. After all, aside from several faded signs still
swinging around town, there was little left to show that my grandfather had even existed.
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stephen di x
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a mode r n day m e m e n to mor i
stephen di x
a mode r n day m e m e n to mor i
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stephen di x
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a mode r n day m e m e n to mor i
stephen di x
a mode r n day m e m e n to mor i
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Re/View
Figure 3
To review is to examine with the possibility
of instituting change. By blowing up aspects of
a face, searching for more detail by looking
deeper into the pixels, the clarity is lost, but
perhaps the essence is found.
RE-COLLECT
Re/Store
Figure 1 & 4
The forgetting curve of retention shows how
a memory is lost over time. Studies show that
humans lose information rapidly at first, but
then the loss transitions to a more gradual
erasure. Transience is one of the seven kinds
of memory failures, which is the process of
forgetting due to the passage of time.
“The photograph is literally an emanation of the
referent. From a real body, which was there,
proceed radiations which ultimately touch me,
who am here; the duration of the transmission
is insignificant; the photograph of the missing
being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the
delayed rays of a star.”
Figure 3: Re/View — Her lips
— Roland Barthes
Memory is something we all experience — whether we feel lost in it,
anxious to preserve it or simply enjoy the stories we keep. Particularly
in this age of reliance on technology to store our memory artifacts, we
are becoming documentarians of our lives.
Re/Color
Figure 2 & 7
The modes of documentation on computers and smartphones all give
a false sense of truthfully preserving the past. To retrieve a memory,
all one has to do is scroll and find the image captured in that moment.
With the growing ubiquity of technology-aided documentation, sometimes we
find ourselves capturing scenes rather
than living in them. By reviewing my iPhone
photographs, organizing them by month
and compressing them into these swatches,
I can get a sense of the colors of these
memories. The amount of compression also
shows the quantity of moments I felt
inclined to capture.
Throughout cultural and scientific history humans have conceptualized the act of recalling past events via metaphor. At first, a filing
cabinet, later replaced by a reel of film available for instant playback.
That model was superceded by our current understanding of memory
as a complex web of cells and networks within our brain that assemble
our past.
The nature of memory is that it is an impermanent, malleable record
of an event. Each time one recalls a memory, the details that stand out
depend on the current context. The present and the past mix as we
restructure a new story. Some details recede, some dominate, others
are entirely fabricated and woven in as the truth.
The way we document affects how we frame an experience. Some
people feel the compulsive need to document their lives through
photography. Though these may be imprecise copies, they are somehow
more perfect than our own fallible recollections of an event. With the
introduction of social media, these private forms of documentation
can now be publicly shared with the internet community. When are
we living through documentation versus actually living? Does the
idea of creating a memory reduce our ability to experience the actual
moment? Perhaps the concerns over new forms of documentation
will be viewed like Socrates’ worries about the invention of writing
weakening the human memory.
Figure 4: Re/Store — Greenway
Re/Press
Figure 5
For memories that are best not to recall and
do not instigate the desire to document with
photographs. From the awkward to the painful,
Re/Pression compresses written accounts
of moments. As the unpleasant edges of a
memory smoothen over time, the ugly words
transform into something more beautiful.
The progression of technology has brought new ways of recording and
storing fragments of an event. How has the computer altered the way
we conceptualize and remember memories? In what ways our dependence on our devices freeing, and in what ways detrimental? When
memory is outsourced to computers, mobile devices and the cloud,
does this enhance or disrupt our perception of our life narrative?
See more at re-collect.co
michelle a ndo
re-collect
Figure 1: Re/Store — Blue Ridge
Figure 5: Re/Press — Spring 2013
Figure 2: Re/Color — August
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Re/Tell
Re/Member
Figure 6
Figure 10
A memory is not simply retold by thinking of
the original event. The narrative blurs with
each prior retelling. The contributors to this
series sent me an image from their photo
archives. After some time, they were asked to
write about the photograph without looking at
it. By reflecting on one image and describing
it without reference, the photograph becomes
the memory rather than the event itself.
Memories of a face are not static images until aided by a photo that freezes a person in
time. This series aims to recreate this effect.
Strips of each individual are layered so that
more pixel information can be held within
one JPG. Despite the multiple viewpoints,
the resulting photograph fails to reproduce a
coherent rendering of the person.
Figure 6: Re/Tell — Sofia’s
Figure 10: Re/Member — Tian
re-collect
michelle a ndo
Figure 9: Re/Fill — Wickenden St.
Re/Fill
Figure 9 & 11
Figure 7: Re/Color — January
The brain tends to fill in the blanks in our
memory based on contextual signifiers. Similarly,
the computer is left to fill in the blanks through
the content aware function. As memories are
replayed multiple times, false facts implanted and
details mixed around, the original memory of an
event is no longer retrievable.
Re/Code
Figure 8
Our experiences are encoded by our brains
so that later they may be mentally recreated.
Similarly, digital photos are made up by lines
of code that the computer reads to arrange
pixels and recreate the image. This is a series
of the exposed lines of code sourced from
Instagram photos tagged with #memory.
Figure 11: Re/Fill — Snow Jump
Figure 8: Re/Code
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I think it’s called “history.” But I don’t want to bury my memories, I
want to be able to retrieve the one I want, anytime I want.
Back in the 90s, when I was in a club date band, I had a wedding gig
at the St. Regis Hotel, arrived early, and found the trombone player
already there. We bantered back and forth as we were setting up,
while the photographer positioned bridal party members for portraits
on the far side of the banquet hall.
“Hey,” said the trombone player, “You see that girl getting her picture
taken? What do you think she does for a living?”
RAM IN
THE CLOUD
We’d been exchanging witticisms for the past ten minutes. I knew
he wanted me to say something funny. My mind went blank. All
the jokes, one-liners and verbal rim-shots I’d accumulated over
years of being a professional musician were suddenly lost in a back
room of my mind. The front room was completely empty. I looked
at the girl and had a vision. I “saw” her, in my mind’s eye, wearing
a white medical lab coat. I turned to the trombone player. “She’s a
radiologist,” I said.
He stared at me, mouth open. “Before you came in I was talking to
her,” he said. “She’s graduating from Cornell next week with a degree
in radiology. But how did you know that?”
“You are like this cup,” replied the Master. “You come with your
questions, but your cup is already full. Even if I were to give you the
answers you seek, you would not be able to receive them. Like this
cup that can hold no more tea, you have no more room inside yourself.
Before your cup can be filled, it must first be emptied.”
Every experience, bit of knowledge, impression, book, piece of
music, person, becomes part of memory when it departs from our
senses. But we try to hold onto these memories as if they were physical possessions. Oh, sure, we can always read the book again. But
every time we read a book, it’s a different book. Every time we see
a movie, it’s a different movie, in terms of what we remember afterwards. Obviously, we can’t keep experiences, we can only keep the
memory of them.
What could have been taking up all that space in the man’s mind? If
his mind was anything like mine and probably yours, it was full of all
kinds of stuff, especially those nuggets called “memories.” Memories
aren’t physical things, but they are still things. The shelves we build to
store them are in the mind. Like your computer, your mind can only
hold so much memory. Thus, in order for new memories to be stored,
some must be deleted.
A bunch of wise masters of all stripes, over millennia have repeatedly
urged humanity to stop living in the mind and switch to living in the
moment. And while we are living in the moment — or “being here
now,” as Ram Dass put it — every single interaction is duly recorded
and subsequently stored in various quadrants of brain/mind. We
don’t have to do a thing, it’s automatic.
My aging relatives and acquaintances can’t remember what they had
for breakfast — but they can tell you about every car they ever owned,
the names of all their childhood pets, their first love, that vacation
in Switzerland in 1978. They’ve held those memories in mind
for so long they’ve built up on top of each other like a Manhattan
high-rise. That’s why there’s no room for the remembrance of other
things past, like breakfast. The old memories are entrenched like
rent-controlled tenants.
Helen Keller is reputed to have said, “What we have once enjoyed
we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” This
wisdom suggests that when we fully engage with life, our experiences fuse with our being, and thus can never be forgotten even if
the mind is not thinking about them. Action, rather than thought, is
the way toward emptying the cup. Talk is cheap, while actions take
effort. Putting in effort has a way of opening a trap door for excess
brain baggage.
No, don’t tell me the only solution is eviction! I love my memories.
Some I cherish, some I revile, some I feel neutral about — but I
love that I have them. Of course, maybe my memories are not even
mine. Maybe they were planted in my mind by others, vis a vis The
Manchurian Candidate, Total Recall, or The Truman Show. Even if
that’s the case though, the memories are in my mind, and possession
is nine-tenths of the law.
One young man of my acquaintance told me he enjoyed going to
vintage shops looking for the videogames he used to play as a kid. He
would buy them again (his old ones were long since gone) and take
them back to his apartment. He’d play the games, expecting to be
transformed into the carefree youth he once was — free of job stress,
debts, girlfriend worries, and all the unpleasantries that seemed to be
accompanying him as he matured.
If we were to encapsulate the Buddhist tea tale in a three-word
mnemonic phrase, “empty your cup” would do just fine. A big part of
everybody’s filled cup is memories. If we were to dump some of those
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“Master, stop!” cried the man. “The cup is already full!”
That extraordinary ESP event stayed in the forefront of my mind for
twenty years as I puzzled over how it possibly could have happened.
Now I know. The information was simply downloaded from the cloud!
Why didn’t I think of this before? The “cloud” that stores everyone’s
mp3s, photos, videos and documents is merely imitating the natural,
organic, Akashic Record-type cloud existing in the astral, or etheric,
plane and described by Rudolf Steiner, Alice Bailey, Edgar Cayce and
many others!
Noah Rabinowitz — Blackhawk
“How’s that working for you?” I asked.
At last, a solution: allow old memories to float out of the mind and
into the astral cloud. (I’m sure the people at Google are working on
this as we speak. But I’m going au natural because I can’t stand the
idea of buying another gadget or piece of software.) Regardless of
method, potentially, each of us can have RAM like an elephant...like
Google...like my cousin Larry, who won’t let me forget my humble
beginnings of a messy bedroom and lack of culinary skills.
“It’s not,” he replied.
I wanted to suggest to the young man that his actions were misdirected, so I told him a story about Carl Jung, who knew a thing or two
about memories. Jung reached a point in mid-life where he wished to
re-connect with what he truly loved doing as a child. He remembered
that he used to love playing with stones and building structures with
them. Since he was now a big boy who could play with big stones,
he decided to build himself a house on some land he purchased at
Lake Zurich. He began building Bollingen Tower in 1923 and finished
it in 1935.
Drink in the experiences,
and the friendships, and the
love, then give them back.
Receive, give, receive, give, in
an endless cycle that spirals
outward in all directions.
The creative process is very handy for expunging memories. Anytime
I can’t get a song out of my head, I write an arrangement of it. That
serves to remove the song from my head and send it back into the
world, where it came from.
So much for emptying. What about filling? It certainly would be
judicious of us to monitor everything that seeps in through the chink
in the old armor, but dear one, it is not possible. I suggest a more
organic approach: empty and fill the cup in a continuous cycle. The
filling happens by itself. It’s the emptying that needs practice.
Soon virtually everything will be in digital format, maybe even
people. This is not a new idea. Early adopters faced insurmountable
challenges, however. In the movie The Fly, the guy being molecularly dis and re-assembled ended up sporting the head of a Musca
domestica stowaway. With the advent of Star Trek came a new and
improved OS. Beam me up, Scotty, to that great Dropbox in the sky.
Drink your fill. Drink in your pleasure and your pain. Drink in all the
beauty of this earth. Drink in the experiences, and the friendships,
and the love, then give them back. Receive, give, receive, give, in an
endless cycle that spirals outward in all directions. Some say the spiral
has no beginning, and no end, that it extends beyond birth and death.
We can drink it all, and let it all go. But what about those memories?
They are so valuable. We don’t want to lose them.
No need to hold onto those precious memories of yours. Store them
in the cloud, where they can be downloaded or streamed on-demand!
Empty your cup. That way you can drink your fill of this beautiful
world, and you’ll have room to remember where you put your keys.
If we are going to dump old memories to make room for new ones,
where can we put them? Is there a “memory landfill” somewhere? Yes,
35
su ter ry
memories, we’d have more mind-space for new things we’d like to
recollect. Since I am a former resident of Brooklyn, I choose an even
simpler mnemonic consisting of one word: “fuggedaboutit.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
su ter ry
r a m in th e clou d
There is an oft-told tale in Buddhist circles of a man who traveled to the other side of the
world seeking a wise guru who would be able to tell him the secret of life. After finally
reaching the mountaintop where the Wise One resided, the man was invited into the
master’s hut for a cup of tea. The man plied the Master with all his questions as the tea
was poured into his cup. The tea filled the cup to the brim, and the Master kept on pouring, even as the tea ran over the top and down the sides, spilling onto the floor.
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untitled
sa nttu muston en
vivian lee
m emories of m e
MEMORIES OF ME
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THE
FAMILY
ACID
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t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
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t h e fa m i ly a c i d
I’m a bit of a prankster, and when
I show this picture to folks for the
first time, I say, “This is my friend
Clare, shortly before she fell to
her death.” Leave just enough
pause for shock, and then I laugh,
“Naw — she landed right below
her feet on the top of the ridge.”
It’s taken at Point Lobos at the
northern end of Big Sur, with a
bizarre sandstone topography that
Robert Louis Stevenson used to
describe “Treasure Island.” Clare
is a graphic designer and still very
much alive these days.
This is a double of Ibis Pitts shot at the home of Bob Marley’s Mother, Cedella Marley Booker, in Miami. In 1969, when Bob was 24 and staying that summer with his mother
at her home in Wilmington, Delaware, he told Ibis that he was going to die at 36, a tragically true prophecy, one of Bob’s many.
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GIs in Saigon in front of a movie
theater showing a film about the
decisive 1954 battle at which
the French troops were soundly
defeated, or forced to leave the
country, allowing free national
elections to be held. Two years
later, President Eisenhower,
aware that the communist
leader Ho Chi Minh would win
the elections, forbade them to
be held, setting the stage for the
final Vietnam War.
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
Generations of memories crowded the home in Racine, Wisconsin, in which actress Lise Hilboldt sat
beneath a painting of Grandma Nash, wife of the founder of Nash-Rambler. Nash’s granddaughter
lived there, married to George Wheary, founder of Wheary luggage, which made millions of the bags
and suitcases that GIs carried.
Filling the frame with a pre-filled frame in outback New Mexico in 1985. I have a very similar shot in Auckland, New Zealand, from 2007. It seems some people want to define how you encode your memories.
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I learned a lot about preparedness from Tim Page, my roommate for two years after the war. He had been a Life magazine photographer in Nam, blown up four times, and
barely survived. Dennis Hopper plays him in Apocalypse Now. Tim himself was trained by the great WWII shooter, Larry Burroughs. In all my shooting, everything was set by
hand — f-stops, time, focus. Burroughs taught that you must constantly be adjusting your camera(s) as the light changes and always be prepared for a split-second opportunity.
This shot comes from a trip to Baja, Mexico. We had just come through a narrow canyon with very low light and as we emerged from it into brilliant sun I changed my readings
just as the driver slammed on his breaks and a wild horse leapt in front of the car. I jerked up my camera and caught this truly lucky image of a life narrowly spared.
42
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
t h e fa m i ly a c i d
I emceed a reggae festival in
Ladysmith, Vancouver Island in
1993, where a walking soft-serve
prowled the parking lot.
My first wife, war correspondent
Cynthia Copple, resting along the
coast of Southern Spain. It’s a
wistful image, and a bit surrealistic,
as befits that country’s history.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti (“He who carries death in his pouch”), newly released from prison, on his
first tour of California in 1986. I emceed his concert and interviewed him on my TV show. “You
must have been so glad to return to your 27 wives,” I said. “Oh, no,” he demurred, shaking his
head sadly. “When I got out of prison, I divorced them all.” “Why?!” I asked, shocked. “Ahhh,” he
sighed, “Marriage is too confining.” Here he is playing his saxophone without a sling on purpose,
making his focus even more intense as he seeks its perfect balance.
43
jesse joh a n ning
44
t h i ngs t h at i forg ot a b ou t
jesse joh a n ning
t h i ngs t h at i forg ot a b ou t
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ABCDEFGHIJKLM
m emoir e
MEMOIRE
IS A
TYPEFACE
THAT
DEGRADES
WITH
EACH USE
MEMOIRE WAS DESIGNED SPECIALLY FOR THIS ISSUE OF LA PETITE MORT.
EACH TIME YOU RECALL A MEMORY, DETAILS MORPH AND BLUR. IN THE
SAME WAY, THIS TYPEFACE MEETS A NEW LEVEL OF DECAY EACH TIME IT
IS SET. THE MANNER IN WHICH IT WEARS IS INFORMED BY THAT OF METAL
TYPE; SHARPNESS DULLS AND CORNERS FILL IN.
THE FORMS ARE BASED ON DE VINNE, CUT IN THE LATE NINETEENTH
CENTURY BY GUSTAV SCHROEDER. THE SHARP QUALITY OF THE SOURCE
SPECIMEN WAS HARNESSED TO PROVIDE A CRISP FOUNDATION FOR
THE TRANSFORMATION.
DESIGN: RYAN BUGDEN
ART DIRECTION: MICHELLE ANDO
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rya n bugden
j e s s e au e r s a l o
r e c r e a t i o n i i , h o l d m e i n y o u r a r m s ( a n d n e v e r l e t m e g o)
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
l a petite mort
Jules Julien: Living and working in
Amsterdam, Jules Julien is an artist whose
illustrative work questions the reality of
the world that surrounds us. He begins his
process with a personal research project
through drawings and design.
Natalie Sims: Natalie is an armchair
astrologer, the Design Director at Sub Rosa,
a professor at Pratt and an aspiring optimist.
Merijn Hos: Merijn Hos is an illustrator
and visual artist based in Utrecht, the
Netherlands. He divides his time between
working as a illustrator and working on
personal projects.
Lucas Chung: Lucas is exploring
life after architecture with Sub Rosa
as his guide and hopes to find a great
cheeseburger along the way.
Clay Coffey: Clay loves color; the structural
kind, like the iridescence of a fish scale, or
an insect wing. He’s an architect, and the
designer and founder of Isaac Rae studio
where he builds modern places, spaces and
things that keep the surrounding natural
environment in mind.
Hvass&Hannibal: Hvass&Hannibal is a
multi-disciplinary art and design studio
based in Copenhagen. Nan Na Hvass
and Sofie Hannibal have worked in close
collaborative partnership with illustrative
and conceptual design in a number of
different fields for clients in Europe, Asia,
and the U.S.
Margot Coffey: Margot is a Creative
Strategist at Sub Rosa and a writer of
design narrative at her and her husband’s
architecture studio, Isaac Rae. She enjoys a
good ghost dance under the moon.
Petra Börner: Petra is an artist and
illustrator based in London. Infused with
warmth and bold character, her artful
handcrafts and paper-cut creations exude
a modernist charm.
Jon O’Conner: Jon is a Strategist at Sub
Rosa moonlighting as a product designer
who enjoys Coltrane, people-watching and
direct sunlight. Noah Rabinowitz: Noah is a photographer/
writer/filmmaker based in NYC.
Santtu Mustonen: Santtu is a Finnish
illustrator living and working in New York
City. Organic patterns, natural science
and movement inspire his work, which
combines handcrafted and analog textures
in a digital space.
Esther Downton: Esther is
primarily a lover of wine and Sub Rosa’s
Production Director.
Rima Massasati: Rima is a crazy cat lady.
She enjoys gazing at the moon, surreal art and
sipping on bubble tea with a scoop of extra
bubbles.
The Family Acid: The Family Acid is
Roger, Mary, Kate and Devon Steffens.
They are based in Los Angeles. Roger
Steffens is a photographer, archivist,
author, actor, editor, DJ and lecturer. Kate
Steffens is an editor, digital archivist, writer
and artist. Devon Steffens is a musician
and artist. Mary Steffens is the heart of
The Family Acid, providing stories,
memories and inspiration.
Addison O’Dea: Addison is a guy
with a pulse. As such, he feels obligated to
makes the most of every beat. Thankfully, the
rhythm he lacks on the dance floor, he makes
up for at the keyboard.
Pamela Kraft: Pamela is an artist focusing
on the intersection between magic and art.
She is the founder and director of Tribal Link
Foundation, which advocates for the rights
of indigenous peoples, supporting their
efforts to preserve their cultures, languages
and communities.
special thanks
Michael Ventura
Audrey Schomer
Lindsey Andon
Arnava Asen
Jonathan Bailey
Jessi Brattengeier
Rosie Cardozo-Weingarten
Rae Cohen Bernamoff
Jeremiah Clancy
Tony Cornelious
Josh Davis
Gabbie De Lara
Anne Dong
Lisa Hardgrove
Ira Kantsurova
Jeff Kempler
Landy Kosmitis
Kris Kowal
Ellie Lammer
Christine Lane
Alejandra Lima
Matt Lower
Lucy Matchett
Lauren Mann
Devin McGrath
Emily Metro
Michael Oporto
Robert Patrick
Benjamin Porter
Julie Puccio
Grace Remington
Marcella Rodriguez
Camille Ross
Laurel Smyth
Darryl Ventura
Carolina Ventura
design
Natalie Sims
Michelle Ando
production
Hanna Boyd
contributors
Michelle Ando
Jesse Auersalo
Petra Börner
Ryan Bugden
Lucas Chung
Clay Coffey
Margot Coffey
Stephen Dix
Esther Downton
Hvass&Hannibal
Merijn Hos
MVM
Jesse Johanning
Jules Julien
Pamela Kraft
Vivian Lee
Rima Massasati
Santtu Mustonen
Jon O’Conner
Addison O’Dea
Noah Rabinowitz
Natalie Sims
Su Terry
The Family Acid
Michael Ventura
Tiffany Wen
front cover art
Jules Julien ­— Bust 1
back cover art
Jesse Auersalo — Border, Hold
Me In Your Arms (And Never
Let Me Go)
Jesse Auersalo: Jesse is a Finnish
illustrator, designer and art director known
for his signature style of beautifully crafted
and often macabre digital paintings.
Ryan Bugden: Ryan is a graphic and type
designer living and twerking in the greatest
NY area. His work primarily revolves around
and around. Reach out to him and he’ll take
your hand.
Tiffany Wen: Tiffany is a Producer at
Sub Rosa who is equally likely to be found
organizing her life on a spreadsheet as she is
to be traveling the world without a map.
untitled
Michael Ventura: Michael wants you
to know that I am he as you are he as
you are me and we are all together.
Coo coo, ka-choo.
editing
mvm
COLOPHON
artists
colophon
issue 5
in order of appearance
w i n t e r s o l s t i c e 2 0 15
MVM: MVM is a graphic design studio
established by Norwegian graphic designer
and illustrator Magnus Voll Mathiassen in
2009. Magnus was a co-founder of the studio
Grandpeople, which received worldwide
design acclaim.
Stephen Dix: Dix is a wordsmith. He enjoys
wordplay in all its forms — particularly when
fineliner pens are involved.
Michelle Ando: Michelle is a designer at
Sub Rosa. Fueled by tea and her interest in
the intersection of mind and technology, she
is constantly at war with Google Chrome’s
allotted space for tabs.
Su Terry: Su is the author of The
Blog That Ate Brooklyn: Inside the Mind
of a Musician, and For The Curious
(www.suterry.com).
Vivian Lee: Vivian is the People and
Learning Director at Sub Rosa and is a
people person. She is originally from a
French Canadian nickel mining town.
Jesse Johanning: Jesse is a designer at
Sub Rosa from the Midwest who still doesn’t
know what he wants to be when
he grows up.
The materials in this publication reflect the views of its individual contributor
and may or may not reflect the views of Sub Rosa.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photography,
recording, or any information and storage and retrieval systems,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Unless otherwise expressly noted, Sub Rosa disclaims any copyright interest in
any of the images included in this publication, and the uses thereof herein are
solely as is necessary for academic and/or social or political commentary.
48
La Petite Mort is published
by Seed Communications LLC d.b.a.
Sub Rosa in the U.S.A.
© Seed Communications LLC
d.b.a. Sub Rosa
Please send all inquiries to
[email protected]
49
l a petite mort
F O R E P L AY — X X X T R O L O G Y — Y O U A R E S TA N D I N G O N A B E A C H
GHOST PUEBLO — ONCE , I WAS A ROCK — LIVING THE DREAM
A P L A C E T H AT N O LO N G E R E X I S T S — H U M A N S : T H E N E W G O L D F I S H ?
A U T O M AT I C W R I T I N G S — A F U L L C I R C L E M O M E N T — A M O D E R N D AY M E M E N T O M O R I
R E - C O L L E C T — R A M I N T H E C L O U D — M E M O R I E S O F M E — T H E FA M I LY A C I D
T H I N G S T H AT I F O R G OT A B O U T — M E M O I R E