Secrets in the mist It is by walking, preferably in the early morning cool, it is by walking on that “art” or “poetry” will be questioned, more precisely will be encountered and not questioned once and for all as a bag would be put down during a walk, because the question would be outdated the moment it would only be asked and not kept open into poetry: by walking, Bashô opened a space to daring, moving, extended, projected poetry, and in his footsteps in scattered processions and associations come the ones who convey with the poet his questioning answers ; by walking, Bashô encourages Open-mindedness, deeper investigation, and such does, after him, the bright process of Kaïdin who, in her own name (borrowing the new dress of Khai Dinh, the last emperor of Vietnam, this great indicator who would decorate his formal dress with bulbs) wanders on from the Taï forest, the primary tropical forest in Ivory Coast, to Hanami and the Cherry Blossom Festival: “nomad” is then the whole point, as step after step one gets further away from the art of the easel and of exhibitions: the art advance is at odds with the art market, is at odds even with the Earthworks of Land Art which left some enormous and permanent trace far in the desert ; on the contrary advancing only happens to be delicate, ephemeral, the seventeen holes (like the 17 syllables of a haiku) in a rock that Kaïdin fills with feathers from a dead bird and with some autumn red berries (in the manner of the leaves and flowers laid out by Andy Goldsworthy or Nils Udo, by Richard Long on kilometres of paths along a stream called Le Talent); now, advancing is inventing, progressing, a stake expressed by the verb satoru meaning both “understand” and “achieve”, an access to lasting enlightment, satori: this encounter when the world is wrapped in the Winter coat of Matsushima, when Kaïdin’s short-lived installation is in keeping with (and does not illustrate but achieves) Bashô’s haiku which could only say “Ah Matsushima-Matsushima aH-Ah Matsushima”, an encounter occurring on the narrow road to the interior-where it is flickering. (Translation of Alain Borer’s text Secrets des brumes) |
|
||||
