Writing

A Response to Windows Written by Kathryn Tulloch

Tāite 8 Oketopa

Thursday 8 October

2020

That gathers


1.

Home life: a towel, a sheet, a mat on the floor. Positioned in front of a large window. Wide-angle view. A model of a drying rack. Frosted glass slowing light. Moderating contrast. Low depth of field. Closer. A fitted bed sheet made of shower curtain fabric. Billowing and stiff in new material form. The bath towel a thin photocopy; smooth fabric, printed texture. Light and darks indicating absorptive qualities it doesn’t presently have. The towel shrunk quietly to some kind of signal, a certain type of concentration. A lino rectangle with a printed woven woollen rug pattern lightly overlaid, visually entwining with equal hue. Questions. A shower curtain, or a bed sheet? A towel, or a piece of unabsorptive fabric? A warm rug, or a piece of cold lino? Materials vibrating in who they are being, who they are actually, and who they are together. Basic questions stirring: what are these objects, what is my relationship to them, what effect does it have on me and them to be near a window? Qualities of evaporation.

 

2.

Slowing down. Fineness of fabric for slowing or stopping the spread of dust and debris. A slowing of light and air passing through. A filtered view through a temporary fence to some kind of fine gritty chair: an eddied collection of sand around a stack of metal remains. Thoughts of accumulation that happen on untouched, left-to-themselves, static or slow-moving forms. The layering of small bits of debris, organic matter, of life finding a way forward for growth, for multiplicity, density, complexity.

A quiet flow of static radio sound passing through the air, becoming apparent when you’ve acclimatised to the show and with the room. Around the room. Light on various forms of glass, paper, wood, metal, cloth. Suncolours, nightcolours, daycolours. Tones of an old wooden floor, new MDF, aged newsprint. Various thicknesses of metal. Thickness of Radio Rain from the other room. A swarm of sound sounding, a quiet thick noise, gently muffling, allowing thoughts to rest. The frequency of headnoise. Vibrating matter. Stuff happening. Background stuff happening, that you don’t need to know about, but reassuring to know it is. Air being filtered and regulated through systems.

3.

Sunrays that shone through a taped grid in the structure of a year-long planner.

Sun-soaked plant-pulp. Golden yellow and brown-grey thin fine newsprint. The sun-fixed calendar is behind UV-protected glass on pause. Delicate organic matter, desiring to be in motion, in rhythm with the sun. More delicate than a grid. Accumulation of time is more like sunlight. Days across a year float, bodily, burning with shadows. Moments radiate and imprint, impress, vibrate. A year stripped back to the essence, to qualities of sunshine. Made visible, tangible, solid by the casting of a grid. Seen in this room now to the sound of rain. Sunshine and rain. The things we sometimes shelter from. To find comfort. Structure. Building, constructing to make comfortable sizes and shapes of shelter. Enduring the elements, protection from elements, functions of elements. In this room, a collection of things belonging and making sense. Things aging and still existing. Of washing, the domestic, institutional, industrial. Easily found and accessed materials for construction in these places. Imprinted, engraved, joined together, embodied. Soaked up. Familiar. Planned shelters and comforts. Refreshing sun and rain. Comfort in shelter. What helps us take or have shelter? When do we want to come out of shelter? How and for how long?

4.

Atmosphere: sheltering us from the sun’s powerful UV rays. Oxygen, arriving from new kinds of algae, 2.2 to 3.5 billion years ago. Enabling biology on earth. Primary production begins: symbiosis between photosynthesising and nutrient-gathering organisms, algae, lichen and moss. The start of the greening of our lands. The forming of our lands: heat and pressure; pre-solar elemental gases, the sun, stardust turning into diamonds and graphite, the first minerals. Then asteroidal early clay, sand and limestone. Planetary formations, metal ores, volcanoes and plate tectonics, melting making the thin earth crust, biological. Minerals evolving, diverse biology co-evolving. Abundant green growth receiving light, flushing sap into the mineral-rich earth. Breaking down, making organic matter, supporting microbiology. Seen and unseen, accessing nutrients from soil-rock minerals, feeding plants, the earth’s thin crust becoming spongy, holding water and CO2. Forest floor like soil. CO2 presently in our atmosphere that can live in our soils, helped in suncycles with a diversity of plants and microbiology. Biodiversity that has happened, just happens, that can be planned (in grids), that shelters us, that shelters within us (makes us), that could comfort us, that filters and holds us, that gathers, like mist and clouds of complexity and density, so that our thoughts and mind can be refreshed, that vibrates and resonates with our being, with our breath, receiving, exchanging, giving.

Kathryn Tulloch