Avian Loop Issue 3

Published Autumn 2021

—

I have lost count of the number of times

I have stopped myself

From correcting the way the toilet roll is on the dispenser in the houses of people I know

I also resist the temptation

To remove price tags from books my friends have loaned me

And to write their names on the fly-leaf

I read a book as a child where the central character was described as “having a way with animals”

It became my heart's desire

One day a lady was walking her chihuahua across the church lawn

The dog ran to me and I picked it up

She said to me “He never lets anyone hold him. You must have a way with animals.”

The next-door neighbours have a dog named Lulu with whom I have a spiritual connection

I believe she likes me more than them

I sometimes think the same of my exes, but not all of them

I used to dream I was back with my ex-husband

In the dream I wasn’t allowed to leave him again

Because the rule of the dream was if I had returned

It was for good

It was at least a year after we broke up before I could break the rule and leave him in my dreams too

I often dream about people I love

I am not surprised if the following day they show up, even if they live far away

If it’s a nightmare, I check in with them to make sure they’re OK

Frequently they aren’t

I think of death or dying most days

I think about bridges collapsing when I am crossing them, also tunnels

When I am in a high-rise building I stay close to the edges of the building in case it collapses

I think that way I might be able to crawl out

I think how I was inside the CTV building on Monday February 21, 2011

I got married five days later

I wonder if prayer has become a superstition rather than a spiritual conversation

I pray for the health and safety of my husband as some form of talisman to ward off evil

I am not a violent person, I would describe myself as a pacifist

But there are a number of men I have fantasised about giving a good slap across the face, mid-sentence like the Batman & Robin meme

And I had a dream where my ex-husband made me kill my lover with a kitchen knife and bury him in a shallow grave in my garden—I don’t eat game anymore, because I think venison might have caused it

I also had a dream where I punched a friend’s asshole ex in the face—I think I ate a vegetarian dinner that night, I just really didn’t like the way he treated her

There is, however, one person I’d like to punch, in real life, in the kidneys, on a sunny weekday afternoon, on the side of the road, outside Westfield Riccarton—just so he would know what it feels like

I’m afraid I’m not a good person, when it really comes down to it

I worry my mother will always worry about me

I bought an iron with a kill switch

So I don’t have to worry if I have turned it off when I leave the house

Marianne once told me that she had heard on Radio New Zealand that there is a name for the phobia

That saying your fears out loud will bring them into being

But she couldn’t remember the word and I can’t work out how to find it

*&*

17.02.21  level 2 ends 23.59

Auckland level 3 goes to level 2

I am out with Zephyr, in the Weedon’s Domain

golf and cricket greens

tarmac tennis and basketball courts

the latest fancy children’s playground

and two Hebe gardens

One tall and dense, the other small and sparse, almost an afterthought

Rabbit secret business

Rabbit secret burrows

Rabbit Islands

Zephyr’s happy place

His helicopter tail swirling above the shrubs,

my only confidence that he has not bolted

out of the Domain to collide with a milk tanker or quarry truck

We are between the greens

golf buggies move in random packs, answering to iPhone commands

rickety across the gravel, clubs shaking

They head to the next green

their owners stop and smile

They muse at the joy in that tail

as though we are having the fun

and they are doing the golf chore

His joy,

possibly the only catching thing in the Domain

Rabbits scatter

in and out of the small Hebes

Zephyr’s eyes glaze with excitement

he no longer responds to his name

We will be here for quite a while.

My phone tells me Hamish has posted.

The Avian Loop is back for 2021

Maybe time to play with structure

Begone Covid brain fog

Begone fascist virtue signalers

Begone Sky Sky Ra Ra Cray Cray Cry Cry

Murdoch will cancel Morrison’s Australian citizenship

And send him to the Dunedin non-corn-rows school and gun club

To be with his kind

A tall gentleman, as bent as a shepherd’s crook stops to chat

He has a very self-assured dog. It is a pug, wide, strong sable chest, perfectly groomed.

Zephyr returns its greeting and is fast off

he disappears into the tall Hebes

Their leaves wave in maze formations

He is on a scent, I circle around

Waiting for his exit

We can see the playground now

the tall gentleman lifts the pug into a basket swing

The pug is given a careful time on all the joy the playground has to offer

the slippery dip, a finale

back to the top again and again

Though we are far away, we are close, within the exchange of their gaze

It is an aesthetic space, often felt when experiencing an artwork

And like the gifts an artwork can bestow,  

Their exchange gifts to us a beautiful stone,

flat and smooth, soothed by time

It finds a deep, green pool beneath a waterfall,

and leaves circle surface ripples as it descends and waits.

28.02.21 level 2 begins 06.00

Auckland is level 3

Part 1

POV drops onto the globe, hurtling down to the Pacific towards East Honolulu and pausing roughly 1,186 metres above the Waialae Country Club. It dips down towards the first hole, polygonal trees coalescing into something more arboreal as it glides along the fairway, 40 metres above the surface, before pivoting at the pin on the green to buzz the next hole. The declension of hills towards the coast bristle with suburbia that encloses the course. There are no clouds in the Google sky.

Nelson - - - - (- - - -) - - tees up at hole 1, 1998, True Golf Classics. The fairway is an undifferentiated green mat. The Regency at Kahala rises above the palms in the distance—the top of the 24 floors high enough to view the entirety of the garden enclosed. Estate of private botanics to reward the pleated elite for their prohibitive annual dues that dwarf the public parks adjacent to it.

Rainbow arc disappears and animated avatar swings as clouds move across the sky in pixelated increments. The white pixel cluster of the ball trailed by a turquoise and blue ribbon through the air. Near the pin the grid overlay maps undulations on the green, mining topos for data. The palms’ ragged bitmaps that define the edges of the garden shelter the 2D mass of ‘spectators’. “Who is watching the threshold of this garden?” Nowhere to go but the next fairway.

The drone cycles through God’s eye view, bird’s eye view, groundless view in the airless garden. Its screen counterpart produces ground as it maps red wireframe intrusions into the fog‘o’war. Gun emplacements along Ohau coast; Waialae a proving ground. The screen divides Su Yu Shin and Angela Goh’s apparitions; the whites of one’s eyes suffused with bluelight. The screen seen from both sides now. Centre of brittle arcadia. POV orbits a spiky shrub on the red grid. Sims 4 build mode. Locus Amoenus. Fantasy terraforming. POV passes nearly through a tear in the render of a right nostril—uncomfortably intimate, like a handshake lasting too long—like the dial-up 700 percent slower.

Facial recognition is a game; inviolability is the prize, so give the A.I. data to cache. It will tell you when you can resume watching yourself watching yourself. Gamify the commute and the onboard peripherals would have covered the outlay. Car play is foreplay; save that privacy shit for your own ‘space. Something something in the streets, Homo Incognitus in the sheets.

The potted cherry blossoms in glass lobbies are too sickly to hide behind, presence reflected off Donald Judd mirror boxes lying about the place. The only way to not hemorage data is a perpetual sliding down corporate bannisters—“I made my way once again, but we met behind every turn, behind every shrub”—or maybe to keep climbing, to see the city from both sides, now. Clouds mirrored in pristine glass, merging with each other. Palms pressed to the pane, arms ending in fog—no face, now. Bare concrete and I-beams. Clouds cover Su Yu Hsin and she darts between pillars.

Paeonia Drive by Angela Goh and Su Yu Hsin. Performed online Thursday 6 August 2020. Presented by Campbelltown Arts Centre and Arts House as part of BLEED 2020.

https://bleedonline.net/program/paeonia-drive/navigation/

https://paeoniadrive.xyz/

-

/ 5 February 2021
On Disengaging

Two people occupy the bench at the pond, sitting to the far left and right of the sun-bleached wooden seat. They both wear black t-shirts and neither speaks. Nearby, the glancing trees shift in the high morning wind, and close their lidded leaves.

/ 12 February 2021
Unbound from a Week’s Utility

In the thin light, I watch the playful geometries of birds bathing, wings and beaks stretching and doubling in the glossy water. A child in a bright parka passes by, calling out in delight to its caregivers at the sight of the birds, tugging hands and pointing. And the birds respond, pouring onto the bank in waves; first the crisp, white seagulls with their wide beaks, then the mild ducks, their feathers fluttering teal and indigo. Even the cream goose with its tangerine face and sun yellow feet, its presence an eager expanse on the cropped grass. The caregivers walk on, deep in conversation. Only the child looks back, slowing their progress, still pointing. The birds mill on the edge of the pond, long after the child is out of view. I wonder, What being, what force in the world would not respond to such exuberance?

/ 16 February 2021

Contrasting Scale

Today, I notice that the smallest water birds generate the largest wakes, the evergreen water rippling out from their gliding forms in wide, lingering chevrons. In contrast, the larger water birds generate shorter, narrower wave patterns. Perhaps nature presents us with a different posture: the smaller we are, the broader our effects.

/ 19 February 2021

                 An Unexpected Respite

It’s lunchtime, and the bench at the pond is occupied by a reclining figure in a black shirt and a pale straw hat, talking obliquely past the water birds into a mobile phone. The bench next to the basketball court is empty. I take a seat, and watch the sun slip the shadow circle of the hoop over the baseline as it orbits west; an irreverent star playing its own game. The stark geometry of the skate park softens in the long afternoon.

<>

The windows have been left open, and it’s balmy already. I’m up early, trying to dig through my cubby of clothes as quietly as possible. I set out to the kitchen. There’s no food out yet, settling on a crappy instant “espresso” from the machine.

First digital check in for the day

INSTAGRAM app

>>

smiling faces : one known : one not : very close up : uninterested, I ignore the caption

a beach : video : shaky pan : dog bounding in and out of frame

Kim K : companion unknown : plush leather private jet seats wrapped with shiny faux-wood boards to support the champagne

1st image, 3 women and their partners : 2nd, my friend and her boyfriend : 3rd, friend looking up to her boyfriend while he looks at the camera

My coffee has been consumed in full. I quickly rustle in the outer pocket of my bag. Event tickets, passport, cash, room key. Heading out the hostel door, now.

        Wait,

        suddenly second guessing my timing and direction

        checking maps

        No, I had done it right.

Turning left, it’s up this way for about 20min before following the fork in the road.

Things are still as I approach the waterfront. The sky is crisp, and the bustle of the day not yet built. I look over to the entrance, still a five or ten minute stroll away. Stopping here for a moment, breathing in the calm.

I look over to the work. Something I’ve thought about for so long, looking at it from a distance, it feels surreal. I’m not here, and it’s sitting in a snow globe gifted from someone more special than me.

        I feel this deeply, and the glass becomes a haze in my eyes.

I give them a rub to pull myself back;

                        the orange

                        the green tuft it wraps around

                        the blue grey water floating

                        rippling

                        tugging at the orange

                        the orange is silky

                        it ripples with liquid

                        I wonder how this is going to work

I approach. I arrive. The line is long.

Second check in for today

NEWS app

>>

UNITE BEHIND BREXIT, URGES MAY

THE NEW MOBILE MOGUL; HOW KIM MADE $45 MILLION FROM ONE GAME

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR DHAKA ATTACK

ASHBURTON COUPLE REJECT CLAIMS OF DODGY ALPACA DEAL

TRUMP CAMPAIGN TOPPLES TPP PLANS

Dipping in and out of my reading, performing a delayed shuffle as I sense the over-eager movement of bodies around me. I do a half-read on the attack, but overwhelmed I soon allow myself to become absorbed by the Alpaca dispute. I think I’m done now, a familiar press to the lock screen.

Looking up, I am surprised by the ground covered. My turn comes around, entry is approved.

It’s more stable than it looks, yet my body still stumbles at the illusion of it. Looking down at the surface of the pier, I try to pick its colour. Orangey-yellow, too vibrant for a mustard but heading in that direction. It’s reflection is blinding and I cannot look too long.

Looking up now, my body gaining more confidence in the structure, I see it stretch on. It will be a long walk to the island. Figures meander along, some more involved than others. A couple linger, in light conversation. It strikes me as poetic the way they move so casually, as if simply out for an evening stroll in the suburbs. I wonder where and how they live, that they can remain so under-whelmed at such a happening. I also imagine a world where we commute via bright piers, and there’s never any rush, so we always just walk.

An older man walking past me now seems more impressed, and flicks me a childish smile. I can see him playing, a syncopated bounce to his step, testing the platform. A set of children bound past me, veering to the left at a high speed. I watch, anticipating an unfortunate end to this revelry. Their parents call out in a frustrated, French telling-off. The kids slow.

I continue onwards, flicking between observation and response. Feeling my body in relation to objects and others, as well as framing moments in my mind. The busyness builds, and I begin to feel tired and decide to head back. Onshore the hunger sets in. I find the closest cheap place I can.

Un cornetto e un cappuccino per favore.

As I order, I notice the mood at the installation changes. Crowds gather as the SUVs roll in. In the ten minutes it took for me to walk over here, the piers have been almost fully cleared of spectators, making way for the ensemble. They emerge from their vehicles, and are escorted to the platform. I can’t see them in full amongst the crowds. I consider going for a look, but decide it’s not worth the effort.

Waiting for my breakfast still, I commence my third check in for the day.

TWITTER app

>>

I am really happy Hilary made her speech right under Trump World Tower!

@realDonaldTrump

Me, approving of something in a work email: “OK, perfect!”

Me, disapproving of something in a work email: “Ok, sounds good!”

@1followernodad

One day, Donald Trump is going to look a reporter straight in the eyes on national TV and say “I never ran for President”

@mattaukamp

Feeling blown away by the grandeur of the floating piers, guys you HAVE to get here. @ChristoandJC is a true auteur, so privileged to be here experiencing the work with the artist himself.

@KimKardashian

Colophon

Avian Loop , Issue 3

ISSN 2744-4740

©Avian Loop 2021

Published in March of 2021

Ōtautahi, Aotearoa

Avian Loop is produced by the monthly art writing group first established by The Physics Room Contemporary Art Space in 2018.

Writers and editors for issue three include but are not limited to:

Georgina Tarren-Sweeney

Naomi van den Broek

Keren Oertly

Natalie Kittow

James Hope

Designer:

Daniel Shaskey

Typefaces:

Avara is a collaborative font initiated by Raphaël Bastide and published by VelvetyneType Foundry. MT Grotesque is designed by Frank Hinman Pierpont.

Printer:

Angus Donaldson

Correspondence:

Avian Loop

PO Box 22 351

Otautahi, 8013