Across Space(s)

Crash

In praise of the incline

Across the street, windows were built at a slant to follow the movement of an invisible staircase. A railing curves to make space for a mailbox. And a parking post now lives at an incline, reminding us that life is to be found in the off-balance.

Take a moment to feel how your body is constantly making tiny adjustments to keep you upright. Now find the smallest possible angle to lean, in solidarity with the leaning parking stopper, so that you just begin to feel gravity moving differently through your body.

Triptych for various ways of seeing

Three windows are arranged across the back of a wall, all of them opaque. They could have made space for something with more imagination, but maybe that's the point: closed off, they let us imagine what they could have been.

Close your eyes for a moment and observe the afterimage. What do you see when you don't see? Move this image from the front to the space behind you. Take a few small steps backwards.

Hyperart Thomasson

Gary Thomasson was an American baseball player traded to a Japanese team in the 80s for a record-breaking sum, where he spent a whole season without hitting a single ball before retiring. Genpai Akasegawa coined the phrase Hyperart Thomasson to refer to objects that have lost their function but not their beauty. Like this window, still perfectly framed despite no longer letting in any light, carefully painted in 5 different shades of orange.

Half-circle for absence

Once there was a tree, around which a wall was built, carefully making space for an overhanging branch. The tree is long gone, but the gesture of care remains as a half-circle, speaking both to tenderness and loss, to generosity that outlasts its context.

I invite you to rest something in the gap—a head, an arm, the hips or a shoulder—and contemplate how one thing carries another.

Alley of improvisational flow

An alley full of tubes and pipes that don't really fit but speak to the hope that things will work out regardless. Take a deep breath and hold it for as long as you can, appreciating the lack of leaks in your own tubular system.

Skin skin skin

In front of the Neues Museum Biel, a series of surprisingly geometric incisions are cut into the pavement. Their precision—no trace of overshoot—suggests care and intention, as if the ground itself had been handled with tenderness. Using chalk, trace some of the cuts as a form of touch and shared liveliness.