III.




Failing to Fetch Me at First (2010), steel, paint, foam, wood, approx 75 x 196 x 70.5 cm.


ART iT: You often draw work and exhibition titles from literature and poetry, like the card you made for Castillo Coralles in Paris, with the excerpt from TS Eliot's poem "East Coker" printed on it. When you quote these sources, are you thinking about the imagery of the poetry as it relates to the work?

TD: No, never. The text exists by itself. I use the poetry as a tool. It is a material as much as plaster: a physical tool that is part of the sculpture, not an explanation or translation. At the time of the Paris exhibition the Eliot poem was very much my situation, my physical and interior situation. It came to me. When I was asked to make an invitation card I started working on an image for the card, but then as I continued reading, I thought I need to use the whole long passage, so I added the text as well.


ART iT: It's a beautiful passage:

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes and ashes to earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces.
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto."

But it's not a quotation for you?

TD: No. It is not a quotation. It's just a sculpture. For me it is sculpture in itself. Sculpture is very close to poetry. You take words and fit them together. It's not just about the content - how you put everything together is very important. The poet Joseph Brodsky also said that making poetry is very close to making sculpture. He said that when he was thinking he would guess what would come next, which is a similar process to sculpture maybe. The result has a meaning and significance, but it has to be built up, and it all has to work together through physical forces.

Part I ❘ II ❘ IV | V | VI




Thea Djordjadze: The Secret Border in Human Closeness

ON EXACTITUDE IN SCIENCE
By Andrew Maerkle




Installation view of Untitled 2001/2012 at Gallery Side 2, Tokyo. All images: Courtesy Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gallery Side 2, Tokyo.


In February 2012 Rirkrit Tiravanija came to Tokyo for a solo exhibition at Gallery Side 2, "Untitled 2001/2012," for which he revisited a work originally made for the 1st Yokohama Triennale in 2001. ART iT met with Rirkrit to discuss the exhibition and its place in the broader context of his career.



I. Nothing to see here


ART iT: I've been thinking about photography recently, so in preparing to meet you I was struck by your use of sculpture as a reproductive medium, both in the way that you replicate existing spaces such as your New York apartment, and in the way that you revisit works serially across a number of years or different situations. How do you understand your use of sculpture, and do you ever think of what you do as something like working with images?

RT: Actually, when I started making art I was more of a photographer, and then I gradually moved away from photography. In terms of how I approach images, or the lack of images, I want for the image to always be changing. Many of my colleagues and I talk about art in terms of cinema, and in a similar sense the discussion of Relational Aesthetics has to do with the idea that images are always present even if they are not apparent. So when we work, we think cinematically: we think about scenarios and certain moments - not about narrative.
I am wary about fixing the image partly because then the experience of the work also becomes fixed, and I always want the experience to be continuous and evolving based on the positions of the viewers, so that the viewers always bring their own constructions into the work. Each viewer approaches it differently and each walks away with a different memory.
But because the scenario is a kind of moving scene, there has to be some kind of frame, and so I use space, or architecture, or even just a piece of wood, as a kind of frame or platform for the scenario to happen. Now of course if you stood somewhere within that spatial relationship you could frame things and see pictures, but ideally I try not to fix things, and that has to do again with the relationship of the viewers to time and space and all these other questions which I think have been quite important and constantly recur in my work.


ART iT: It's funny you mention cinema. As I was reviewing some of your projects and exhibitions I thought of Kon Ichikawa's film, Kagi (The Key/Odd Obsession, 1959), based on a story by Junichiro Tanizaki. The story is about a love affair between four people: an elderly man, his middle-aged wife, their daughter, and her fiancé, who works as a doctor. Seeking to spur his sex life, the elderly man creates a scenario whereby he invites the fiancé home for drinks, and then the wife gets drunk, goes to the bath, faints, and has to be rescued by the men; while she's still unconscious some kind of sexual situation happens either between her and the husband or her and the fiancé. This becomes a form that gets repeated several times throughout the story, each time in a slightly different way and initiated by a different character, as though it is a form that the characters are passing around and altering among themselves. This suggests the idea of a transparent sculpture, which I connected with your work.

RT: There's an older series of works by Franz West, "Passstücke," which are these objects that people pass between each other and interact with in different ways, and I like the fact that in order to interact with them you have to transgress the structures of the objects. I have always been interested in critiquing institutions. An institution can be big or it can be personal, as long as it's some kind of structure that you build and then destroy - even though most people don't destroy them - and it's important for me to always try to undermine that structure through play, through a game-like scenario.


ART iT: The tendency is to think of Relational Aesthetics, as well as your own projects such as the cooking events, as somehow "affirmative" community building. What the example from the film shows is that it doesn't have to have a specific value attached to it.

RT: I never made work because I thought it has to be affirmative. I think people like to frame it that way because that's how they want to see it or justify their participation. But I don't make a judgment of it that way. I like people to get pushed and feel uncomfortable, and often, even if it's familiar, there is a moment of discomfort - sometimes the most familiar thing can be the most uncomfortable, because it's too familiar. I think there's always a back and forth.




Installation view of Untitled 2001/2012 at Gallery Side 2, Tokyo.


ART iT: How about when you work in a gallery space? Many of your projects have an explicitly provisional quality to them: you can't visit them without being aware that they are temporary.

RT: I always have problems with working in a gallery space, but that's part of what I do. Again it has to do with the problems with being in a fixed structure. I like having the car parked in the gallery here because you can drive it in and out and go into space, and in that way it also has a time structure as well.
But that's the thing I'm always struggling with. I always have difficulty just hanging something or putting something in the middle of the room. I'd rather put something near the door so people have to kick it around the room before they realize that actually that's the work. There is a relationship to the problem of the gallery space being very neutral. I always have a lot of problems with passivity, so even if my work is not aggressive neither is it about being passive. It's not a given. That's something I always try to figure out - what is going to trigger people to have to work a little bit.


ART iT: But some critics describe your own projects as being somehow "passive."

I would say it's not passive, but it makes you decide for yourself. I'm interested in making people think where they should go, and in that sense a certain kind of openness creates space for people to find their own way. I believe that inherently people, once engaged, will find their way. They won't stay fixed. People are changing all the time, and they change through experience.

Part II ❘ III




Rirkrit Tiravanija: On Exactitude in Science

II.



The Easy Isn't Done Easy (2007), lacquered steel, 100 x 70 x 50.5 cm.


ART iT: It's difficult to put the experience of your works into words. Certainly there is a technical vocabulary to do so, but it would seem almost absurdly technical when applied to the sheer elementality of the situations that you create, and the encounters between material, form and physics that occur in the works, or the way that the lines blur between support and display object and environment. Quite a few of your works resemble characters from some kind of alphabet, and seem to equally combine the same degree of arbitrariness and significance that symbols do.

TD: Many of the works have concrete sources. For example there is a drawing by Le Corbusier, a bisection of the golden ratio of Notre Dame with two half-circles intersecting. I was fascinated by this figure of Notre Dame's golden ratio cut in half, so I made it into a sculpture. It's not like I thought up the form myself or arrived at it through movement.
There are a number of works that come from architecture. There's a piece based on an architectural void, like an alcove. I turned the void into a solid, reversing the negative space. This piece I first used as a plinth, then I made it in different sizes, and now it also stands by itself as its own sculpture. This shape also appears in the drawings that I made for the installation Time Future Contained in Time Past (2008). So in making numerous variations, it became part of my own language. In that sense even though it has a very concrete origin it almost came out of nowhere. I was looking at the architectural object, and the shape just appeared when I saw the negative space.
Sometimes I see something familiar that resonates with my sensibility, and then I am overcome by this urgency to use it for myself.


ART iT: In addition to the idea of variations of form, many of your works have a kind of torqued aspect, as though they have been twisted on their axes at some point in the process.

TD: I am always experimenting with impossibility: is it still possible? Is it still possible for this to stand, to defy gravity? Is it still possible to be a sculpture, or a body at the same time? Sometimes something makes me uncomfortable and has to be changed, and it has to be changed in an impossible way. Maybe I am attracted even to people who are a bit twisted. I don't have answers to this.
But I don't think I'm doing forms. I am working with movements. I work with materiality or energy - it's a strange word, I always hesitate to use it.

Part I ❘ III ❘ IV | V | VI




Thea Djordjadze: The Secret Border in Human Closeness

© Nils Klinger

documenta 13
9 JUN - 16 SEP 2012
Kassel, Germany
http://d13.documenta.de/




Participating Artist - PEDRO REYES' PUZZLES by Octavio Zaya

Participating Artist - Thea Djordjadze: THE SECRET BORDER IN HUMAN CLOSENESS

Participating Artist - Jérôme Bel: SANCTUARY OF CONFRONTATION

Photo Report - Karlsaue Park I ❘ II ❘ III

Photo Report - Fridericianum I ❘ II

Photo Report - Hauptbahnhof I ❘ II

Photo Report - Neue Galerie

Photo Report - Ottoneum

Photo Report - documenta-Halle

Photo Report - Other Venues

Previous coverage of documenta 13 participants



Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: Retrospect/Forecast 2011/2012

Shinro Ohtake: An Indexical Survey of Tokyo in the Age of Cinema

Allora & Calzadilla: Allora & Calzadilla: NO COMPETITION by Dan Cameron

Ryan Gander: MOBILIS IN MOBILI

Dora García: The Inadequate

Anri Sala: IN AND OUT OF ARTICULATION

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: From the Forest to the Bangkok Streets

SANCTUARY OF CONFRONTATION
By Natsuko Odate



Theater Hora - Disabled Theater. Photo Michael Bause. All images: Courtesy Jérôme Bel.


In November 2011 Jérôme Bel came to Japan for a performance of The Show Must Go On, mounted at Saiatami Sainokuni Theater in conjunction with the annual interdisciplinary arts festival Festival/Tokyo. ART iT met with Bel at that time to learn about his plans for participating in documenta 13.



Interview:


ART iT: As a contemporary dance choreographer, you not only create performances for the stage but also participate in art exhibitions and collaborate with art institutions. In Japan, for example, you were included in the 2008 Yokohama Triennale. Is there any particular reason why you are so involved in the field of contemporary art?　

JB: Recently I have been receiving more opportunities to work in the context of contemporary art, as with my presentation of The Show Must Go On (2001) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and my participation earlier this year in the Tate Modern's online project, "BMW Tate Live: Performance Room," while at Yokohama I performed the piece Pichet Klunchun and Myself (2005).
Even with my participation in this year's Documenta 13, I'm not exactly sure why I am invited to these events, so I myself find it surprising. It may simply be that contemporary dance is popular in contemporary art right now.


ART iT:　I'm sure that is hardly the only reason. I think your approach to dance shares significant overlaps with how others consider contemporary art.

JB: Perhaps. My friend Tino Sehgal is known for creating performances for museum spaces, but I myself have no interest in such a project. I like the apparatus of the "theatre," and have no interest at all in the apparatus of the "museum." At a museum, the visitors come and go as they please, and the space is too bright. That is not the place for me. Strictly speaking this definition of the museum is certainly questionable, but at least it's my personal understanding. As such I think of the museum primarily as a space for displaying documentation.


ART iT: So you maintain a clear distinction between museum and theatre?

JB: Yes. When I am in invited to participate in exhibitions, what I present are videos, specifically, recordings of my stage performances. It's the same as when a museum displays the correspondences of an author: the display is not the work itself. For me the work exists only in the black box of the "theatre."




Theater Hora - Disabled Theater. Photo Michael Bause.


ART iT: Is your project for Documenta conceived for a museum space, or for the theatre?　

JB: Thanks to the efforts of the artistic director of Documenta 13, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, we have found a small theatre in Kassel for my use. It is a former cinema that was in fact designed by Paul Bode, brother of the founder of Documenta, Arnold Bode. It is a fantastic space, shaped like a cocoon. I will be premiering a new work there in that space.


ART iT: Can you provide specific details about the new piece?

JB: I will be working with professional actors who belong to Theater Hora, a Zürich-based company for actors with learning disabilities.
At this point I am still figuring out the details, but in the performance the roles of the group and of the individuals will be interchanged. In The Show Must Go On, the entire work was determined by the role of the group, or the community. It's not that it was conceived in reaction per se, but my next work after that, Veronique Doisneau (2004), for the Paris Opera, isolated the role of the sujet in the ballet company. Some people who have seen the work think that I scripted everything for Veronique, but what she recounted on stage was entirely her own story, even though of course during production we were constantly working together.
The new piece will incorporate both those aspects. Where the actors usually work together as a group, they will be asked to step forward as individuals. There are among them those who cannot stand, or those who have trouble speaking, and I think these are important characteristics for the stage. But I am still not clear how it will all come together.


ART iT:　Can you elaborate on the process that led you to pursue such a piece, and also on how you feel about presenting it in the context of Documenta, where so many artworks will be on display?

JB: On a trip to Kassel Carolyn took me to visit an abbey which was part of the Breitenau concentration camp during the war and is now a psychiatric clinic. She must have already had something in mind when she took me there, but in any case that experience will be connected to the new work.
I have no problem with these somewhat chance connections, but it would be disingenuous to say I had no hesitation about producing a project for an exhibition like Documenta. Tino Sehgal encouraged me to do it, and I agreed to participate on the condition that I could create a new project and that it would not be an installation but rather a performance piece.
During the three months that Documenta is on view, Kassel transforms into a culturally and intellectually extraordinary place. Held once every five years, the Documenta project itself is incredibly ambitious, and also non-commercial. But I believe that in bringing to such a context people with learning disabilities, who in a sense are not rational, it will be possible to raise questions about humanity itself, and how we define reason and culture. I have yet to decide the exact theme, but my piece will address the fundamentals of humanity and what it means to be human. I believe it will be a work of transparency, one that abounds with a childlike spirit.


ART iT: Can you clarify how you use the word transparency?

JB: I am opposed to the idea of control or manipulation. A theatre can be a site of control, but I myself prefer not to use it that way. Rather than hiding certain elements, my approach is to reveal everything.




Performance view of Veronique Doisneau. Photo Anna Van Kooij.


ART iT: Returning to my earlier question, Documenta is hardly your first contemporary art exhibition. When you participated in the Biennale de Lyon in 2007, you adapted The Show Must Go On into a kind of musical archive. How was that experience for you?

JB: To be frank, Lyon was a disappointment. It was there that I understood clearly my lack of interest in the museum. At the time The Show Must Go On was scheduled to be performed at the opera in Lyon coinciding with the Biennale, so I agreed to participate. In the mornings I was working at the museum, and then in the afternoons I went to the opera to work with the dancers, but working by myself at the museum was extremely tortuous, whereas in the afternoons everything would go smoothly and I was so pleased to be working with my team. That's how I came to understand that I do not care for making installations and that I am not suited to the museum. On a deeper, unconscious level, I have a strong desire for the theatre, and cannot exist anywhere else. All my desires develop from that one desire.　
I like working in groups and with communities, whereas the work of an artist is solitary. Sometimes I too like to be alone, but I dislike working by myself, even though there are people who call me an artist. Recently there has been an increased convergence of the fields of art, theatre, performance and dance. But even so my domain is within the world of contemporary dance. That is where I am rooted. I was raised on contemporary dance and people like Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer. And beyond contemporary dance I was of course also influenced by Nijinsky. So it feels right for me to be a choreographer. Even when I am invited to participate in art exhibitions, I always think of myself as a choreographer.


ART iT: In that case what do you think of Tino Sehgal's projects? In both his solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2010), and in works like Kiss (2002), he creates a kind of spectacle for the museum space, one that is conscious of the space itself. You say you have no interest in the museum, but can you articulate why you must work in the theatre?

JB: Tino is a very close friend, and I have the utmost regard for what he does. All his projects are wonderful and perfectly suited for the museum. But for me, why theatre? It is because there is time there. It's not that I think time does not exist in the museum, but if visitors think a work is boring, they can walk away whenever they want. In a museum the viewer has complete discretion - and that is certainly one of the values of art and of exhibitions
But for myself I need some kind of enforced time. It is important for me to work within an apparatus that has been precisely determined in time, and where everyone can share the same time. You could say that in such a place it is not only the dancers, but the audience members as well, who form a kind of community.
In art the viewers are not generous with their time - and there is also the mystification of art. In the theatre, however, one can experience the passing of time in silence and tranquility. More than the time of viewing a work, I am rather drawn to the reality of having to pass a given amount of time in a determined space, as when - for example - flying to some place on an airplane. Personally the theatre is the place where I feel my self, as a viewer, to be protected.


ART iT: Yet even as you uphold the tradition of the theatre your works themselves are entirely avant-garde or, indeed, definitively contemporary dance. In other words, you pour yourself into creating a kind of dance that has never before existed. So it is surprising that you do not attack the system of the theatre itself.

JB: It's true. I think I am influenced in that regard by Roland Barthes. I want to position myself within the tradition of contemporary dance. No matter how artistic or avant-garde the movements may be, it is all relative to the existing tradition. I still have faith in tradition and historical events. Rather than rejecting tradition, what I am doing is shifting it.　
I also have a great love of Italian theatres. They are like red wombs edged in gold trim. The theatre functions as a space of security that has almost motherly qualities. At the very least it shields those inside from the outside world. And it is in such a space that fiction appears. Everyone knows that what happens there is not reality, which is precisely why I connect it with security. However terrible it may be, because we know it is not reality we can endure it.
I often say that I would be willing to kill in order to realize a scene that I am pursuing. This reflects the strength of my desire for my works in the theatre. In a museum, if something isn't working, I try a few times to fix it but at some point I can easily let go. This never happens in the theatre.　In the theatre I am constantly striving to create new things. Then, fortunately, I get more offers to do new works, and I can delegate responsibility for the old works to my assistants. People say with regard to old works that one should always monitor them, and take full responsibility in ensuring that they are performed as closely as possible to the original, but I do not live in the past. I live in the present. Naturally, I have a stronger interest in making new works.
Of course, a decade since it was first performed, I am still discovering new things in The Show Must Go On - new discoveries about my works, about my life, about theatre and about society. If not, there would be no sense in performing the old works.




Performance view of The Show Must Go On. Photo Mussacchio Laniello.


ART iT: How important is it for you to allow for new interpretations of your works?

JB: If people maintain an interest in my works such that 30 or 50 years from now they are still being performed, then obviously I would have to think up some kind of sustainable format for them. But I am simply not so interested in "preservation." Everything disappears, so I think it's fine to leave that process to nature. I still do not have an answer for it. For example, with classic ballet we try desperately to maintain the original form, but it has nothing at all to do with current social situations, and the stories are complete fantasies. Yet ballet is also part of history. I have no interest in the way that ballet exists, but on the other hand I understand it is important to think of some way for my works to be transmitted to future generations.
Currently I feel the best method is to record the performances on video. As videos, if there is a need the performances can be handed over to mediatheque and university collections. And then if someone has an interest in my works, that person has access to an entire video archive, and then he or she could even go so far as to restage the works based on the videos.


ART iT: But isn't this similar to the way works are kept in museum collections?

JB: I hadn't thought of it that way, but certainly you are correct. However, even being able to access my works through video, there is still nothing more important than seeing the live performances. With the development of the Internet and digital technology, there has been an unprecedented dissemination of all kinds of information, but nothing can replace the power - and ephemerality - of a live performance. Live performance is so important because it can resist the reality that is created by Hollywood special effects.


Disabled Theater premiered as part of opening activities of documenta 13 and will be presented for the public three times daily at the Kascade Cinema in Kassel on Sep 12-16. More information is available on the documenta website.

Jérôme Bel: Sanctuary of Confrontation

THE SECRET BORDER IN HUMAN CLOSENESS
By Andrew Maerkle




Deaf and Dumb Universe (2008), iron, foam, rubber, plaster, paint, ceramics. Installation view, Neue Nationalgalerie, 5th Berlin Biennial. © Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Uwe Walter, 2008. All images: Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London.


Currently participating in Documenta 13, Thea Djordjadze had her first solo exhibition in Japan in late 2011 at Rat Hole Gallery in Tokyo, where she presented a group of new works made on site over the course of several weeks. ART iT met with Djordjadze prior to the opening of her exhibition to discuss her approach to art making in greater detail.



I.

ART iT: One work of yours that interests me is Der Knacks (2007), the title of which references F Scott Fitzgerald's essay, "The Crack-Up" (1936), about life as a continual process of breaking down. What did you see in the essay and how does it relate to the work?

TD: I was overwhelmed the first time I read the essay. In the German edition, "The Crack-Up" is presented together with a response by Gilles Deleuze, "Porcelain and Volcano." This was a powerful combination: both texts address how we are marked by life but simply have to carry on. While I was reading these texts, one day I happened to break a piece which I had been working on and had set out on the floor to dry. The piece completely broke apart.
The process of doing art, or specifically sculpture, is about knowing what you are standing for, and I would never get hysterical about breaking something in the studio, because it is important for me to be calm and to have a kind of mastery over each moment. So the piece was lying there, broken, and I immediately made a new plaster cast to fit the broken parts back together again.
At this point I was not consciously thinking of the essay, but of course I had just been reading about cracks and breaking. I put the piece back together, and it came out very solid, but with a crack in it. So I just banally called it "Crack-Up," using the German translation of the title.


ART iT: In the essay, Fitzgerald writes that breakdowns consist of "big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside" and then "another sort of blow that comes from within - that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it." And it seems that many of your works also have this aspect of either appearing to have been physically broken from the outside, as with this untitled piece from 2005 which resembles a helmet that has been battered apart, or otherwise appearing to be collapsing from within, as though disintegrating under their own weight. You talk about how as a sculptor you are in control, but your works themselves seem to have escaped human control, and been shaped by the elements.

TD: As a sculptor I want to be in control but I also accept things as they are. Things are going to disappear or breakdown, so I try to appreciate them for their fragility and understand the strength that is within that fragility. To understand this can be difficult. Yesterday I was very excited because I had just finished a piece, but when working with plaster you never know when it might crack or not - even with just the slightest movement. So waiting for the plaster to set is an uncomfortable state, and it's certainly not about control.
What I was saying about mastering each situation is more about taking things as they are, and then in accepting the freakness of accidents somehow gaining control over it as well. It's ambiguity: we are the owners of our ambiguity. When you are young you think that if you are one thing, then you cannot be another, but after a while you understand you have to allow for both possibilities, or that you are sometimes more one way or more the other depending on the circumstances.




Both: All Men Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others (Orwell) (2008).


ART iT: Is it fair to describe your practice as a sculpture of breakdown - of disintegration, or rather metabolism?

TD: It's not just a sculpture of breakdown. It's a mixture of different things. There's a distinction between the materiality of a sculpture and the psychology of the person making the sculpture. In terms of materiality, certainly I am attracted to qualities like delicacy, or a special color or texture, but the fragility in my work comes from different things. It's difficult to explain if you do not understand my process. I want very much for the process of art to be part of my being.
In German we would use the phrase "comes with it." You are one of my friends, someone else is part of my life, and the art is always there. It has to "come with" any situation. I can be somewhere - a new place - and I need to be able to make art because it is part of my life. But if I worked with things like iron casts and heavy, solid materials, then it would be impossible for art to come with me to different places, because it would be limited to the specific situation where I could work with those materials.
And I'm not talking only about drawing or painting. I need to be able to create. I want art to be a gesture. I want it to be an energy around me. That's why I don't like talking about it, because it's difficult to explain. It's about personal experience, and it has a lot to do with time: my timing, my interior timing, and why things come out the way they do; it has to do with how I move and how I live.


ART iT: Still, there is an aspect of involuntary processes informing the works, for example in the way that at some point the material itself decides the appearance of the sculpture, or the sculptures decide themselves, as opposed to being determined solely by the intent of the artist.

TD: With some sculptures I go to a metal works for fabrication. Usually what happens is I book the appointment 10 days in advance, and I know that once I get to the metal works I will have to decide on the spot what kind of iron to use, and I know that the metal workers will need a sketch of the idea I have in mind, but despite knowing in advance and having all that time to prepare I end up doing the sketch on the bus as I'm heading to the appointment, not before.
It's not that this is the only time I'm thinking about the work - I'm constantly thinking about the work - but this sense of urgency is what motivates me. It makes me do impossible things. Maybe it's because of the adrenalin, but I am always the most focused when I'm sitting in a very loud, messy bus doing my sketch on the way to the metal works.

Part II ❘ III ❘ IV | V | VI




Thea Djordjadze: The Secret Border in Human Closeness