Walking down the street near my house...

A Korean woman flags me down. As she approaches she says:

Mama, [something in Korean] apartment open. [Something in Korean] 2,000.

I politely declined and thought: I like her gusto! And the fact that she called me "mama."

How to communicate in a digital age with no common language

From a chat conversation with my friend at an artist residency in Beijing.

I asked him how he was getting on communicating himself.

his reply (translated into English) was: 

for example, when I got to eat I take pictures and if I go back ... i them to them.

"por ejemplo cuando voy a comer hago fotos del plato y si vuelvo...se la muestro"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65987575@N03/6011654452/

Yesterday

Just a quick thought about recent global events:

Yesterday I received an email from the US Embassy in Chile, to be more cautious: "the enhanced potential for anti-American violence following recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan.  Given the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation, U.S. citizens in areas where recent events could cause anti-American violence are strongly urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations." Ok, granted I don't actually live in a country where "recent events could cause anti-American violence", but it begs the question - why are we celebrating on the streets? what the hell did we win? More fear?

Earth Rotations

As many of you know I have been collaborating with a collective photo project since July 2009: Eyes Everywhere // Ojos por todos lados. It was started in January 2007, by Elizabeth Ross (Mexican artist) and Ayanna Jolivet McCloud (American artist); they invited other women artists, spread through out the globe, to participate: to dialogue each week through images. Every week the artists post images from their location. Every month the theme changes. The project has involved artists from Mexico, USA, Spain, Uruguay, Malaysia, Argentina, the Netherlands, Dubai, Austria, Norway and France.
The image here is my post for this week (it's a sneak preview - do you feel lucky?? it will be officially posted on Saturday). The theme this month is "Earth rotations": We normally say that the sun sets up and down. I [Agnes, the artist who proposed the theme for April] say the horizon sets up and down. Can you [the other artists who participate] with your pictures let us see how the earth rotates by the means of simple observations?
What a challenge. The first week I posted a thoughtful, yet rather boring photo. Last week .... um I was a very bad collaborator and I didn't send my image in on time. But this week, this is my image and I think it says a lot about earth rotations, life movements, and how nature affects us.
Obviously in nature itself you can see this evidence (hence the photo), but this photo - or this theme, rather - has led me to delve a bit further and question where this is evident in my own personal work. Small things/events, gesture - considering gesture as a supposedly insignificant thing, or perhaps better stated "unnoticed". My research is about the unnoticed, but nevertheless perceived/received.
Gosh, I don't know if I really have a point, but I wanted to share this - this week's EYES photo and my thoughts about my image, with you. Maybe this logic only makes sense to me ...
I hope that you can take some time to think about the unnoticed changes that you have experienced recently - or long ago.

a Sketch, a thought, something I am following

The Process of Padding Video

First, thinking back to that summer semester corset-making class in 2003, I lined up all my pieces, and then I went to town and stuffed the section. But, um, to my surprise I made a pillow instead of a section of a cozy.... ah the trials and tribulations that Nicole has making 3-dimensional objects (let us not forget that she is an architecture school drop-out).

No worries. I figured it out, and below is about half of it. Yes, I realize that I started it last week, and, really, I should be done, but I got an invite to go to the beach for the week and enjoy a bit of this thing called summer. So I put all on hold and jumped on the first bus out there!











Documentation and thoughts about impulsive beach trip to come.

video camera snuggly-cozy

I brought my sewing machine down to Santiago with these lofty aspirations of using it. So these last two weeks I have bought some supplies. I have literally broken it out once, but I have been planning - I promise.
My lofty aspirations include: clothes, hand bags, eye blinder things, puff covers, and camera/external hard drive/laptop/ipod bags/sleeves/cozies.
I have been doing research online, looking for the perfect (free) pattern, but they all seem to be very "bag-ish" or how to reconfigure a messenger bag to be a super duper camera bag. But today, I got this amazing idea (insert sarcastic font): why not just make a wrap-like-thing for my camera!!!!
So I measured and decided which panels would be from which fabrics (the scraps) that I bought. Then at the bottom of my (still very small) supply bag, I saw my old socks. And you know me and (trying to) recycle old clothes ... so my next plan of action was to use the sock and make the padding for that - blah blah blah. That was until I tried to fit the camera in the sock. Obviously the thought part of it was profoundly more exciting that the result. Also considering I then realized why they were "old" (notice hole in the toe).
And then after documentation of setback, I realized that my still camera lens hadn't been cleaned in ages.

Well, back to cutting fabric.

Desde el otro lado

close and f a r a w a y

uP and Down

a Chilean September 11th

We were on our way to a barbecue, to commemorate the day that the Pinochet took power in 1973 and many people went missing, were killed, tortured ... The idea of this happening is foreign to me. The smiles and lollipops land warns of terrorism and "fights" it abroad so that it will never reach our soil. It is so removed from my consciousness.


So the bus we took passed by Estadio Nacional: one of the torture camps run by the dictatorship. The stadium is still used today for soccer games. To me, I thought that was horrible - the American that I am who must sensationalize everything, but the Chileans explained it as "moving on", not allowing the past to dictate what we do in the present. Anyhow, we were passing the stadium and the bus stopped and I said, This is what September 11th is - as we watched the vigil. Do you want to get off?, Mati asked me. We jumped out of our seats and out the door.

in fact, I know.

I realize that my last few posts have not only been few and far between, but also much more like news announcements (actually, they have been just that) rather than blog posts. I don't like it either.

Life is funny though. Even when you are seemingly not busy, these things that you enjoy so much, seem as though you can't do them. Perhaps your brain won't relax enough for it to happen, or perhaps you just feel that you want to give it your all and you just simply don't have the time for it. But all the while, you truly aren't that busy ...

The winter here in Santiago is rough. It isn't really that cold, especially considering the time I spent in Chicago and Alfred, but it is bone cold inside the buildings. Energy gets sucked from you. I find myself overcome with exhaustion in the middle of the day. I even make "I'm cold" sounds, when it isn't that cold - just habit, by now, I guess.

The pollution will wipe one out as well. I come home and am amazed at how dirty my clothes have become after just one wear. Every time I wash my hands, I almost cringe at the dark, black, and gray running water from them. I try to keep my nails as short as possible otherwise the dirt and grime gets stuck, almost immediately upon leaving the house.

You would think that after the loooooooong and hard winters I have endured in other places (mentioned above), the mild weather conditions would be welcome. And yes, they are! I enjoy the fact that I don't need a winter coat, my fall jacket and a scarf work just fine. But with the experiences mentioned earlier, I am all too eager for spring to show its face. Do they have Groundhog's Day here?

I have said before that Santiago is a city of contradictions. Its winter is more proof of my very premature theory.

New Media

I think this one speaks for itself:









or maybe you can't see all the digital cameras ------------------------>

Translation notes

Hallucinogenic complex = Drug paraphernalia

I was recently asked to translate a Code and Conduct and Health and Safety Regulation pamphlet. I am not a translator. I have translated before. I do a pretty good job. I do a better job when the jargon is at least in my field of expertise.

So, it got me thinking: you read "hallucinogenic complex" and understand what they are trying to say. Maybe "drug paraphernalia" doesn't immediately come to mind, but either way you get it. But, once "drug paraphernalia" is said (or occurs to you) suddenly everything becomes clearer.

I read the Normas de Orden and I understand what they are trying to say, but it remains in this abstract realm (which I am completely comfortable with), until I find the correct translation (sometimes I have to look for synonyms then leave the phrase/paragraph for a while until the correct way to say it in English dawns on me). It all becomes abundantly clear when this happens.

I am not sure if it is my faulty and severely-gapped knowledge of Spanish or just a peculiarity of my personal thought proceses; in any case I am not sure what I am getting at.

This has just been a recent observation I have had about translation...
.

Santiago de Chile

Santiago is a city of confrontations and contradictions: the architecture, the people, the politics, the religion(s). It sounds like an overwhelming and unconsidered statement, but it has been swimming around in my brain since I arrived.
The people are open and hospitable, like none I have ever seen or met. Yet, there is this an astounding feeling of separation - from you and them and amongst themselves. There is a middle class, unlike many South American countries (so I have heard), but the separations between the classes is much greater than I am used to. There is a clear divide between the haves and the have nots. There is a clear divide between the mountains and the sea, that is where Santiago lies. There is a clear divide between the architecture of the 60s and now, hmmm yet they are situated right next to one another.
There is a quite uneasiness with the history of the Pinochet regime (I realize this is a very touchy subject here) and yet, there isn't. I definitely do not understand how all of this is.
The balancing act is precarious, yet they seem to almost cancel each other out. They are hiding something. Or are they?
I need to investigate.
I almost feel like I cannot post this.

Just some thoughts

Some of you may be wondering just what is it that I have been up to on the other side of the world.

I've been thinking (amongst other things). I thought I would post a few thoughts. Still working with the lil' fuji - I love the exposures, but I certainly don't luv the un-user-friendly-ness of the menus. My new LUMIX should arrive in the next week or so. Hopefully the menus will be easier to navigate.
Additionally this lil' lumix will give me access to better shots. Why? Santiago (and Valparaíso) are notorious for pickpockets and theives of the like. The smaller the camera, the less conspicuous I look. I hope the camera is all that the reviewers said it was....
You may be wondering what you are looking at. Well, there is the fish market, Kate, a certain perspective in Valpo, somewhere on Irarrazaval (yeah, took me a while to figure out how to say the name of that street correctly) waiting, an almost deserted beach after days of rainstorms in Chuy, Uruguay, some debris from a day of neglect in Uruguay (before the rainstorms), and just a corner house with the Andes in the background - respectively.
I figure, even if I don't really have the time to make work, I can at least work visually through ideas.
Do you think I should write more so that all of the images have some text in between them? Hmmmmmm......

Thinking in photos

Media is like languages. For some time I have been in VideoLandia: everything I thought came out in video. Soon I visited BookLandia (and would subsequently live between the two). Now I have returned to PhotoLandia, maybe just for a visit. Perhaps I will make a mountain home here.

Here are a few thoughts from PhotoLandia:




Maybe one day they will form a community so that I will not have to change currency every time I cross a border.

Choices

toss; trash; throw away; dispose of; abandon; cast; cast off; chase; clear; discard; dismiss; dispense with; ditch; drop; dump; eject; eliminate; evict; extrude; free oneself of; get rid of; jettison; junk; lose; refuse; reject; rid oneself of; scrap; shake off; shed; shuck; slip; throw off; throw out; turn down; unburden; get rid of; abandon; relinquish; shed; do away with; dump

I think this is the opposite of collecting. Hmmmm first, you have to collect what you want to dump.

What is the residue of abandonment?
.

Why I haven't been posting.

Writing

I think writing on the computer, as my sole form of writing, makes me feel like everything is final.

It seems that what I type is not personal and is published for the world to see. It is/will be. That is the nature of the blog, but somehow when I write on paper it seems more personal.
Why is that?