Once Within
A time
Once is an instance. An example of an instant, or a minute or hours or some time. One example of some amount of time.
And this ‘once’ can be applied to each work set onto wall or floor in this – the 12th – SITE Santa Fe Biennial. Each artwork is a ‘once’, an instance.
Are these instances generated by an artist? By a writer? By artificial intelligence?
Who are these, I mean what are these and why do I pretend to have a relationship to them every time I go to look at this show?
And now a poem from curation notes:
Franco-A... American memory hotdogs Life-size, doll dream of Chatty Cathy uncanny scramble ... grow up & old silences silencing ... immobilities move foreign and familiar ... alive and dead .......... ... meaning meaninglessness
The point of my offering you, dear reader, a poem is for you to either accept or skip. It is not intended to answer the above question about who the maker is. The poem’s maker is moi, using the notes on the wall explaining the sculpture in the photograph that my friend took of me. I could be lying (and it’s ai) but I am not. I am honestly trying to help you understand me, and my efforts to understand this big menagerie of an exhibition.
If you skip it, I understand you don’t feel the benefit of understanding either me or it. And that’s cool. I’m going to do the same to (all TV series except my guilty pleasures, all social media except my preferred Substacks, most email, subordinary conversations except in a foreign language, any news labeled or (actually) commentary not news, toe fungus ads, all ads if humanly possible, many but not all of my husband’s detailed descriptions of how he is going to put something together) about 75% of what is in front of me daily.
I will not play ‘ai or real’. I only have time for what I may need on my learning journey. The ‘may’ is the open part and lets in plenty. Toe fungus is a closed issue for me, just like the 2025 World Series.
But Once Within A Time is open. It will be on view at SITE until January 2026. And I wanted help beyond the wall placards to understand it.
On Saturday Nov 1, I went to the bookclub- Coffee & Conversation organized by Kate. For this iteration we were to read The Story of Your Life by Ted Chaing and meet at the Military Museum. Chaing’s story is the basis of the film Arrival.
Within.
Read or see the above and you get the ‘within’ that is part of the title of this show. Hint: it’s about time not being an arrow.
More relavently for those of us who cannot time travel, we discussed language at the Military Museum considering its forms: spoken, written. These are separate and unrelated for the aliens that arrive in Chaing’s story. Both are communication between beings. I was thinking about dream and memory- these are intra-being communication.
Chaing was a writer in residence at the Santa Fe Institute, which is a physics ‘institute’. I can imagine (as if in a dream) or create a narrative (using my memories of interactions with this institute) his day in residence. He, in my memory, would be asking questions to physicists drinking coffee, then wine. New story ideas would be placed in notes.
Meanwhile, I’m taking notes, and the following is a poem for you from them.
Story Understanded
Child-parent depth relationship equals
Studies of: alien communication,
Desire even if one knows the future.
We’re all aliens to someone
Our visual communication is older than speech or
Cold hard words on a piece of paper and
Without the linear aspect of reading.
Visual imput a more open experience of time
Stuff we come to reading by the end you get to know
Coming to the language of the whole – not there yet.
Words are abstract
All that’s written is completely different
Anchor words to reality
Becomes material
Connect the threads
Fizzy
You see that you’re getting it. You’re understanding this show better, right?
You can imagine this scientist – Joseph Yokum – making these landscapes on package wrapping paper. You are giving him a little attention because you can use what he’s offered. Sometimes when you don’t get it, if you’re feeling bored. Do as John Cage advised: be bored for 4 more minutes.
Here is an image I like even though all the instances in view here are one’s I skipped.
Here below are some of the pieces I didn’t skip on my last visit.
Diego Medina:
- rising on the wings of dawn! 2025
- the soft light that surrounds eternity 2025
- a new revelations, 2025
- a side wound to a new world, 2025
- the spirit of prophecy (a crown of thorns), 2025
- between worlds, 2025
- a spark in the sepulchre (love has come to break the veil), 2025
I have breezed past all the images in this post, or story I’m writing. I asked people in the coffee time book club if they could tell me about this show. A moment of silence and then the idea of that visual communication developed earlier in human development. And maybe that it is disassociated from spoken or written language. Do you want to put a narrative on these pieces? I’m not going to do that, but I will talk about a couple of other pieces that are really great. One is a tourist map that belonged to Willa Cather when she visited Santa Fe in about 1919. Her notes about sites she saw are insights to her. This explains why I like knowing an author/artist biography. I’m curious, but mostly it is so I will not skip, and will give attention.