THE JET BLAST COOLING PUMP II
- (Tuesday 06.24) -
I'm riding in a pick-up truck along a winding road. A pile of junk fills the back - blankets, crates, boxes, I've no idea what's in them. Alongside me in the cab there are two or three friends - the director of a shady 'Save the Whales' foundation, an insurance broker and, I think, a female estate agent. There's an air of recklessness. We're on our way from A to B, not even knowing where A was or B will be. Despite our increasing speed the coat and a fat wallet on the bonnet don't move.
Before I get used to this scene, we reach a beautiful green forest cut by a single-track railway. We walk along the tracks, enjoying the silence and tranquility. It's impossible to get lost in such an environment. Then suddenly the forest becomes a beach. I'm just about to tell my fellow travellers how calm the sea looks, when we're caught by a tidal wave. We survive and kill ourselves laughing. Then we play a game following the edge of the high tide along the remaining strip of beach, avoiding the enormous waves that sweep towards us. A different company, a windless storm, an absence of cold.
- (Wednesday 11.09) -
A hand wrapped in a rubber glove. A piece of ear with tufts of black hair. Strange parts of machinery, red against a background of steam and fire. At least two-hundred motors, all the same colour, installed next to each other in an industrial park.
A view from above on the Vehicle Assembly Building complete with infrastructure and security towers. A view on an unremarkable city. I don't have the faintest idea which city or country. To the left a woman in a grey dress cycles past, her entire face covered with an orange veil. Why does she protect herself? A series of picturesque images pass my eyes at high speed. Jumping dolphins, bubbling waterfalls, wooded landscapes, romantic sunsets, a mountain covered with everlasting snow and a babbling brook in the foreground. Views of fields carpeted in flowers, hundreds of goldfish skimming the surface of a beautiful pond. The images become more anonymous; details of the structure of a leaf, a flagpole seen from the base, the hide of an animal, a piece of cloth. Rubbish, empty floors, a completely stripped house, a deserted hospital ward. It's almost impossible to grasp the series of miniscule enlargements that follow. I can't describe the images, I don't know what they are. Less light, less colour. Reversed images, some of them so complex it's impossible to dissect them. Indeterminable colours and shapes, mixed without logic or meaning. A different kind of interpretation emerges. White light, a surface into which I would immediately like to throw myself.
- (Thursday 03.53) -
Watching the oncoming traffic, you will soon start searching for exceptions - an old car, a strange text, an odd colour. Our eternal quest for the exceptional is nothing less than an effort to try and grasp the structure of what we see. The same thing happens when you're walking in the country. You look for human traces, fences, railings, telephone poles, houses. You aren't interested in the exceptions as such, only in the confirmation of their existence. Last night I went to a park by the river. What caught my eye at first were all the people walking their dogs. It looked like a public gathering with the dogs as go-betweens. The field was full of them, right there in the heart of New York. Half a day later it happens again. I'm driving around and by accident I end up near the Olympic stadium. For once, it is possible to gain access and I find myself completely alone in a 72,000-seater amphitheatre. A little foggy, the last remains of snow. I am enthralled by the vastness, especially as it doesn't seem to matter whether anything has happened or will ever happen here. This moment of expectation is what fascinates me. Maybe nothing ever happened, maybe things are about to happen but now it is empty. For a brief moment all of the 72,000 seats belong to me, not in actuality but through the experience of an in-between moment. In the end the skeleton is more interesting than the flesh. Maybe that's what it's all about. The potential of things or the moments before they take shape.
- (Friday) -
Nothing received.
- (Saturday 08.44) -
The N7 - smoothly, closer than I thought. There are clues: Amsterdam/Hengelo/Osnabrück/Hannover/Berlin. Every time you pass a sign it gives you the distance to the next city - 200, 150, 37. They're so tempting, after all 200 kilometres is not that far. All those signs form a grid that covers the entire continent. Scale and distance are related to the human scale, a measure than can be bridged, controlled. You notice the transition from West to East because of the recent widening of the narrow roads and the number of new flyovers. Other than that you can hardly tell the difference. Arrival is exciting. What is the structure of this city? Is there any difference between the former East and West Berlin? Berlin is wide. There's so much space everywhere, so many broad green streets. The architecture of the western suburb of Charlottenburg (West) is reminiscent of that of any nineteenth-century city. East Berlin is simpler, old, badly maintained but definitely more interesting and full of potential - still an in-between area that breathes more freely. In several years this will all be forgotten, the past will be swallowed by the eternal thirst for progress. Neat signs will then point the way to the monuments of the past.
- (Sunday 13.39) -
I find myself on a terrace close to the water, surrounded by beautiful industrial buildings. People are diving off the quay and the sound of their laughter can be heard far away. Nearby a bridge leads to the oldest part of the city, high on a small island. Everywhere tourists are taking the typical pictures. The weather is beautiful, though in the distance clouds foreshadow a shower. A man is trying to impress two girls by performing tricks in his small rubber dinghy. Guests on the terrace are slightly perturbed. Soon after the man drags his boat up onto the bridge and dives off. I hardly dare look. A splash, then laughter. One of the girls has fallen out of the boat and tries to climb aboard again. Suddenly there is a rumbling noise to my left. The sounds get louder and louder. It's as though an ocean liner is heading for the citadel at full speed. But there is no ship, just a big cloud of dust. Suddenly the whole island starts moving. One square mile of rock slips quietly and elegantly into the water like a capsized ship. Breathtaking. Nearer to me entire buildings spin round on their axis and disappear, gracefully, almost without a sound. Probably because of the slow beauty of the scene, I forget to check if I am still standing on safe ground. People around me don't make any noise, they don't scream. Simultaneously a huge building behind me disappears into the water. It's as though the laws of gravity have dissolved. Thinking as quickly as I can, I take a deep breath and hope that I can swim up to the surface. Suddenly it is as dark as night. Apparently I am caught up in a huge air bubble. From this moment on my thoughts are vague. The dream stops before I know whether I have escaped.