Love at first sight
A reconstruction

 

That’s my house, the one from 1968, the one that stands there a bit to the right. Possibly, yours is the one next to it. Maybe it’s the familiarity factor that make these neat rows of mixed architecture, where modernist apartment buildings are right next to small villas with plastered façades, so attractive to me. Or maybe it is the surface that is so appealing, the colours and the forms. The image as image, not what it represents. By playing with our notions of reality and fiction this image makes my stomach turn. I get a feeling of having come too late, maybe just seconds after an explosion has taken place. The sky is still white and the windows are broken. The only signs of life are the small flower plants hanging from the windowsills. I search along the long row of houses. But no, not a living soul in sight. That’s when the silence becomes apparent. The kind of silence for which we strive but that is so hard to find. I am standing right in the middle of it, as if all else has come to a standstill; the laughter, the hum, the hawks, yes it’s all gone. This is not a total absence of sound but just as in John Cage’s silent music-piece 4’33” one hears two sounds, one high and one low. One is the nervous system, the other the blood that circulates. This music make dissipates the feeling of awkwardness and I can enjoy the prevailing stillness when standing in front of an image of a number of Märklin-houses on linoleum flooring. And I love it.

 

Emelie Persson

 

Translation: Ciléne Andréhn