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diff --git a/blog/digital-letters.md b/blog/digital-letters.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..27dbe0c --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/digital-letters.md @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ ++++ +title = "letters in the digital age" +published_at = "2025-07-16T19:12:51+01:00" +updated_at = "2025-07-16T19:12:51+01:00" +tags = ["thoughts", "writing"] ++++ + +when was the last time you wrote a letter? like, a proper letter. for a lot of people, the closest thing could have been some thank-you cards as a child. if you were lucky, you were possibly taught how to format and write both casual and formal letters in English class. if you were very lucky, or if you were a nerd., maybe you had a pen-pal. + +i've been trying my best to learn how to actually communicate effectively with people, as part of maintaining and growing meaningful relationships. there are so many facets to being in touch, and oddly, there isn't actually that much good advice on the topic. one would think asking older people would work, but simply being older is not ever indicative of a mastery of this aspect of life. well, i'm still figuring it out, but through experimentation i feel like i've accidentally discovered (along with those i practice with) an oddly forgotten methodology. letter writing. + +everybody has different communication styles and strengths, and each kind of communication, the same. actively talking is one thing, but writing is another. sure, you can always write a long text. but the texting experience/medium is just utterly garbage for this. everybody hates long texts. the long text is less likely to have thought in it. it usually ends up being a long rant or a screed, absent of any editing, even at the level of a spell/grammar check. either it's a massive paragraph or it's a train-of-thought series of massive paragraphs, both hard to read and total slogs. + +letters are different. traditionally, by nature of being a physical thing, they have gravity. upon reception, the sender has from-the-outset communicated a base level of intentionality. "i did not just write this, i had to sit down and _make_ this for you.", inviting the reader to meet them where they are at and out of respect, at the minimum attempt to mirror any intentionality, patience, and thought in their reading. + +all the benefits of long-form writing apply. it takes time. parts can be written on different days, communicating the nuances and developments that come from mulling over thoughts and feelings over extended periods. akin to journaling, there is the ability to converse with your past self. there is no rush. the act of care in editing takes time and leads to new epiphanies. + +on a technical level, there is further expression in mixed media, attachments, styling (colors, calligraphy/font, decoration ?), layout. i think this idea alone has the capacity to be infectious. already i have mentioned it in passing to people and they have surprised me with letters, each in their own style. they are fully formed windows into personal thoughts and reflections in high definition. there are so many details to pick up on. the contrast with other formats is so stark. an acquaintance surprised me with a letter, and i felt able to subconsciously pick up the ridiculously high number of choices that must be made, were not made. + +a one-to-one (or one-to-few), private dynamic distinguishes letters from public, published, long-form written media. prose is subtly different. however, finally dispatching the letter _is_ somewhat reflective of publishing. the anxiety. it is no longer possible to make edits, add more information, details, etc. then one is left awaiting a possible reply, which will also take longer than usual, as the reader has to digest and possibly even write their own letter. any extended dialogue is slower. there is little risk of being accidentally brash. responses also don't have to be letters too. letters can spark multi-layered discussions and conversations. keep balances! don't get carried away and lost within the letters. use them as excuses to meet in person. + +the letters also immediately become snapshots in time of feelings, thoughts, relationships, that can even be referenced and quoted in new letters, building an interconnected multi-dimensional canon of lives and relations, to be reflected upon in the far future. + +-- + +the cool thing is basically all of this is accessible in combination with additional possiblities arising from a digital format. as such, i would like to introduce the retro-new concept of digital letter writing, utilising the building blocks of html and css. + +html is the perfect format for letters as it encourages mixed media while being text-first. for those who do not know, html is hyper-text markup language, the language used in the web. it is usually used in combination with css (cascading style sheets), to render, format, layout and style webpages. html5/css3 are stable, being mature formats used over decades and likely to be here to stay much longer. they are also portable. every computing device with a web browser can open an html file. + +in digital letter-writing, html is handwritten. all data is included in one file, everything embedded in the html. css styling is inline. images, videos, fonts, are all encoded as base64 urls. using html/css grants a similar level of expression you can achieve with a physical letter, with the benefits that come from a digital format, namely, said digital media. it is possible to embed interactivity that would not be possible with paper and pen: video, hyperlinks, sounds, games (?). + +it is not a requirement to be restricted to html and css. if you know javascript or another programming language with web/wasm capabilities it's possible to build-in even more advanced interactivity. however, don't underestimate using only html and css. by sticking to a minimalist spirit it's easy to get carried away into css-demoscene-adjacent rabbit holes. css is capable of advanced animations, and interesting results can be reached with pseudo-classes and odd html element types[^1]. such a mentality can also encourage a dig into the plain html, to discover a hidden layer of thought, as well as new methodologies to learn from one another. + +learning html/css is easy if you've never done it. i will update this article with a video/text tutorial once i have finally finished that project, but for now, i would recommend the awesome mozilla [mdn web docs](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development). and these skills are also useful for building websites! if you don't enjoy directly writing everything from the start as html, i would recommend beginning with [markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/) (which is basically just fancy-formatted plain text), and then converting that to html using either a markdown-to-html web tool or something like [comrak](https://github.com/kivikakk/comrak?tab=readme-ov-file#usage). + +when you're done with your composition, all that's left to do is to optionally date it, either in-content or possibly as an html comment, then send the html file however you like. instant messenger, e-mail, physically mailed usb stick? then the recipient gets to download, view, and possibly archive it for safekeeping. i store my digital letters in a special folder in my documents folder, organised by dates, correspondents, threads. this manual aspect adds a differentiation to email, as well as the fact files must be managed locally and with respect and care to ensure data longevity. + +as a proposition, i believe this concept could be taken further. this all is still somewhat of a starting point, and i think spreading the word a bit could help in unveiling new related ideas. so try it out and see where it takes you <3 + +p.s. on a separate note, i love the concept of paperless post. if i had more time i would develop some kind of paperless post clone, but even better, incorporating these ideas for further expression. paperless post tries to emulate paper but something more web-native could be cool. + +p.p.s. this all has gotten me interested to read posthumously published letters too :) + +[^1]: [Inline CSS Puzzle Box: suricrasia.online](https://suricrasia.online/blog/inline-css-puzzle-box/) diff --git a/blog/the-nothingburger.md b/blog/the-nothingburger.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fe1dc65 --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/the-nothingburger.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ ++++ +title = "The Nothingburger" +published_at = "2025-09-26T09:34:55+02:00" +updated_at = "2025-09-26T09:34:55+02:00" +tags = [] ++++ + +Hey blog it's September 2025, and nothing has happened. Charlie Kirk got shot, Nepal elected their prime minister on Discord, Donald Trump and his goon discovered Tylenol causes autism, and something else but I forgot. Everything feels like being trapped in a nothingburger. I cannot allow myself to become trapped in the cycle of the news cycle of news of rage at other news. I feel the need to systematise and use up my hours most efficiently. I no longer watch YouTube. I go to the cinema. I don't scroll the internet. I read books and serious people writing about them. I go to the club, the philharmonic or the opera. I need everything to be a mille-feuille of meaning and if it isn't, I must interpret it as such. + +I went to see Aida at Deutsche Oper recently. The entire experience of going to the opera is so silly. I took the U bahn in my strategically-tight little cocktail dress, forcing me to hop-pi-ty along instead of jog with my bound legs up and down flights of stairs in order to not be late. The pilgrimage's terminal was U Deutsche Oper, signalling cultural importance. There is the architecture of the building and its entrance, with scattered open-air cloakroom, then a delayed foyer on an upper-level overhang, as if emulating a journey into a pocket dimension. The auditorium nearly appears as a building within the building. Multiple entrances to the audience pit are labelled for efficient herding of the audience into the auditorium. + +Aida the tragic opera revolves around 5 main characters: Aida, Radames, Amneris, the Ethiopians, and the nation of Egypt. Aida is the slave-girl of Radames. She is in love with her master, who has been elected as the leader of the Egyptian army. Amneris is the daughter of the king of Egypt, and (basically) has a crush on Radames, destined to resent both him and Aida the slave girl. Classic love triangle tragic set-up. The Ethiopians are "attacking" the sacred nation of Egypt, but the gods, along with the divinely-elected army leader, will protect the blessèd nation from these barbarians! + +I started to lose my sympathy when Aida appeared to collapse and die from heartbreak and psychological suffering for the 5th time. The truth was all of these characters were caught up in self-constructed borderline-psychotic neuroses. If Aida was real and not some manifestation of both the resentment in Amneris' and Radames' relationship and the guilt Radames feels from the consequences of his actions in war with the Ethiopians, Amneris should have moved on from the dumb himbo and let him run away with his slave girl to some far-away land. Problem solved! Nobody (spoiler alert) has to commit suicide. + +So, nothing ever happens. But wait, no, something definitely happened here. Yes, I was perplexed by the perhaps unjustifyably- and ambiguously-modernised staging. Yes, I felt as if there was a need to engage with the art on some stupid and detached interpretive level. But then, after I nearly dozed off while they were busy killing themselves, I was once again struck awake by the ceremony of the clapping. The reality was that the reality of this make-believe reality was just immense. Slowly, this was unveiled, as the previously-hidden participants shuffled onto the stage to bow and curtsy. First, the obvious: the orchestra stretched themselves along the length of the stage. Then, the opera singers came out. But they just kept coming. The opera singers who had been strategically placed and hidden within the audience. But they just kept coming. The costume designers, the choreographers, the set designers, the directors. But they just kept coming. The composer, the architect, the audience. But they just kept coming. All these people, all of this, to build up all the layers in the mille-feuille. The performance of one moment, to be unrecorded and lost to time, never to happen in the same way again. + +And above all, I _had_ felt something for Aida, a reflection of my relationship to my own manufactured neuroses. Are we not Radames and Amneris caught up in our artificial modern-life neuroses a lot of the time? I _had_ come and allowed myself to have a nice time with somebody I had only recently met. And I _had_ both shared my feelings and also learned some of her own perspectives. + +I am sitting on the train again. I am so wired in. That guy reading a book couldn't possibly be reading a book because he wants to read a book. The other guy sitting next to me is longingly observing the women on the asian softcore porn x parasocial entertainment livestreaming app. To attend an event one must be part of the instagram hive mind. To be at the event one must scroll instagram and pretend to be busy to avoid the discomfort of being alone in the club. Everything has been seeping away. I am writing this and I feel these observations stripping me of my life essence. I am no less detached than those I believe to be detached. "It’s not just that the internet distracts you from making art: the situation is much worse than that. It sidles into the process itself. It replaces your thoughts and words with the thoughts of a digital entity that is not quite yourself but not quite something else either."[^1] I need to simply be. There is no time to be unserious and there is no time to not be silly. + +What is the something that happens? There is always something that happens. Things are constantly happening. There is alignment, integration, execution, catalysis, back to alignment. Opportunities for silly things to happen are constantly and perpetually being gifted to all. I feel it is important to leave space and take them up to escape the mundane. The Integration of these alignments into the self makes the self spit out options for execution. Still sitting on the train I recognise the beauty of the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek building. I must go to the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek: execution. Going to the building opens new alignments: catalyst. The cycle starts again. I learn more about architecture, I process grief, I meet a new person. + +The things I decide to do are the things that happen. + +> "you’re just tired, I tried telling myself, you’re just worn out, I justified myself, but couldn’t stand my own inner critic, I ran until I could taste blood in my mouth to the grassy area by Kirkeristen, flung myself down on it, buried my face in it, sobbed into it and recalled my recent dream. I immersed myself in it, the big truck wheel outside the window, the wheel of life and the strange flower and finally the sun, I lost myself in it and slowly I calmed down and began to sense how I belonged to the earth and when I opened my eyes, I saw a huge yellow dandelion growing right behind a bush and it looked joyful, or so it seemed to me, because it grew behind a bush and was a dandelion and yellow. And I got up, dusted myself down and calmly walked back while I thought about Rudolf Karena Hansen’s ‘life or death’ with every step, with every decision, on which side would I stand? I had a choice and I had to choose, we all had to, so would it be ice age or spring?" +> -- Vigdis Hjorth + +[^1]: [https://thepointmag.com/criticism/alt-lit/](https://thepointmag.com/criticism/alt-lit/) diff --git a/blog/yoshitomo-nara-hayward-gallery.md b/blog/yoshitomo-nara-hayward-gallery.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eab685b --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/yoshitomo-nara-hayward-gallery.md @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ ++++ +title = "Yoshitomo Nara at the Hayward Gallery" +published_at = "2025-08-11T18:47:22+01:00" +updated_at = "2025-08-11T18:47:22+01:00" +tags = ["art", "exhibit"] ++++ + +_Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, UK_ + +It is telling that the first room at the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at the Hayward Gallery in London prioritises self-mythology. One is faced with both a massive wall of vinyl record covers, and a miniature children's playhouse packed with kitschy memorabilia and trinkets vibe-curating the background of the practice. The house integrates the themes of youth (rebellion) and adult (indifference), with a splattery mess of child-like paper scribble-drawings on the floor, adjacent to empty beer bottles. Ultimately, it is all too calculated. + +Nara is 65 years old, but he is also a 20-year-old femcel. The tour guide makes a point to tell us to check out the digital aspects of the exhibit. The YouTube videos of him working in the studio. The official exhibition spotify playlist. His work feels like the cultural repackaging of the phenomenon of the hippie boomer/gen-x youth rebel -> bohemian lifestyle green party voter for the born-in-the-wrong-generation romantic. His striking, cute-accelerationist iconographic style is the perfect solvent for carrying this communication into and down the algorithm. I could not help but queue to take the photo. Every time somebody took a snap for their Instagram story, every time I failed to resist, it was working. + +The body of work is so consistent over time. The room far back on the upper ground is the only glimpse into his process during his time in Germany, where he developed and locked in said iconographs. There are doodles of similarly-kawaii characters, the color palette of coral red, aqua-teal, and forest green is not yet fully decided upon, still encroached upon by yellows and oranges. There is too much intentionality, to the point it feels insincere and specifically catered towards inflating the value for the art market, and later, the algorithm. It is a very intentional choice to draw like a child. Ponyo-core is currently in right now. + +From a non-cynical perspective, the works are technically wonderful and dazzling. Dimensionality arises from minimalism. In the neo-impressionist works, the use of color and the dissonant combinations of the three tones in the palette add depth to the flat complexions. In [Midnight Tears (2023)](https://www.yoshitomonara.org/en/catalogue/YNF7346/) (and similar works), visible brushstrokes create the illusion of a nose bridge and facial structure. Shapes are simultaneously manicured and blurred. The dinosaur-esque interpupillary distance and gaze makes the subject appear dazed and a little dumb à la vine boom sound effect. The expressions are ambiguous and carry a hello-kitty-has-no-mouth effect, allowing the viewer room to project their own emotions onto them. The simple poses perfectly and strikingly bring across differing weights and dynamics. + +Returning to ground in the real world: Yoshitomo Nara is selling these for insane amounts of money. If he truly was the kind of person to get arrested by coppers for doing graffiti after being unsatisfied by the London art world, couldn't he just sell his one 12 million dollar painting and like, move on? At the moment, sometimes it feels like the imagery is communicating 'my therapist says I have climate anxiety'-apathy, further, that it's okay to feel that way and sit with it. I fear this means to some that "the world is over and there is nothing I can do about it so I will not try". Comparing the earlier works with his latest, there is a drop in explicitness and unease, less blood, and decline in inflammatory text, and a move towards more subtlety. The weird part is that the future subtlety ends up feeling and communicating more politically. + +I have to admit this comfort and subtlety speaks to me. I feel seen in the milky figures unseen by the proper, evil and indifferent adult world. A [Knife Behind Back](https://www.yoshitomonara.org/en/catalogue/YNF2602/) suspends more power than bloody knife visible in [Dead Flower (1994)](https://www.yoshitomonara.org/en/catalogue/YNF1112/). I aim to be the girl standing, stubborn, angsty, against this mess, uncompromising, refusing in place, while still being a little bit hidden, unpredictable, passable as not a threat, but nevertheless ready to strike. _My_ therapist says _I_ have climate anxiety. + +It is beautiful, however compromising, for any punk aesthetic to be extended to opulent ends. It almost reminds me of revolutionary murals. I think of these massive paintings sitting in rich peoples' homes and private collections and I feel emotionally broken by the comparative inaccessibility. The tour guide mentions this is his first _public_ solo exhibition in the UK. I can imagine these paintings, comforting and incendiary, being perfect for transitory spaces, like a waiting room, an airport, or a foyer. A place that is for everyone. Somewhere where I can glimpse them in passing, but also where, deserving of attention, you can appreciate them if you are stuck for longer than you expected. Due to their combination of both wide aesthetic appeal and ambiguity I could see appreciation developing over people and time. The generalness and universality of the feeling also lends to this. For example, the collective and anonymous grief exhibited in the paintings of figures partially submerged in milky water, or in other feistier works, a persistent reminder of the child inside, what one wishes for the world. + +This is why I am conflicted on the marketability and algorithm-ability of it all. This universality is amplified, but I fear the subtlety can be lost. Also, a parasocial direct relationship with the artist can ruin the relationship with the art. Exhibit A: official Wednesday fanart (on high quality artisinal office paper, mind you). + +I am brought back through to the back window of the playhouse, where it is possible to glimpse the logo on a self-incriminating Amazon box. There is an inevitable unending discussion on authenticity and appropriation of punk. It is easy to excuse this all away as simply the Japan-specific flavour of Western culture digestion. Yet Nara is still both expensive, marketed to hell, and institutionalised at one of the biggest galleries in central London. Unintentional intentionality accompanied with moments of self-mythos, or intentional unintentionality with cracks of lucidity? I can't tell if the Amazon box is there on purpose. + |