Power in Paper

A couple of Wednesday morning creative finds. I’ll be blogging a few times today to share recent adventures, discoveries and Rachel’s general thoughts. Today is one of the first days since I’ve been back in the UK where I haven’t got any appointments, I haven’t got to go anywhere, drive or get the train. In fact, I don’t have to leave the house if I don’t want to. In reality, we know that won’t happen…I want to go swimming today! So as I do a little what I call Rachel admin, continue to brutally clear out my house and engage in the normalities of day-to-day life, I’m realising that most UK TV and radio is terrible after not watching or listening to either for months and months. I think I could actually live without a TV now, and that’s a nice feeling. I could never live without music though. I’m slowly slipping into a holiday state of mind as work is finally, FINALLY coming to a rest point. I can already feel my brain departing, a contented feeling taking over, being at peace in my mind…tiredness kicking in as my body calms and relaxes, where I already know many afternoon naps will take place in my garden whilst (trying) to read in the unbelievable British Summer sunshine that has finally arrived. It is beautiful and I can’t get over how blue the sky is…though I hear Shanghai is having an unprecedented number of blue sky days recently. I’ll be back there soon, and I hope they last. Keep pushing through rays. You literally change the way the world feels inside.

So the two finds…the first is ‘Urban Origami’ installations (July 2012) on the Streets of Hong Kong and Hué, Vietnam by Mademoiselle Maurice. Her statement for the installations in both cities is politically grounded, even though she isn’t content with this context, ultimately standing for the people. She wants to speak about the liberty spirit in the Hong Kong streets and encourage the people to stay as independant as they can. For Vietnam, she used the star of their national flag again to represent the people – the farmers, students, workers, intellectuals and soldiers –  who together fight for their independence.

“When we know the hard history of the country and all their years of war, that’s a tribute for their bravery.” – Mademoiselle Maurice

The hexagonal pieces were created in Paris just prior to her trip to Asia. They very simply show the pure geometry of the hexagon, what she sees as one of the most perfect geometric natural forms built by the insect – bees. It is supposed to be a little tribute to this insect because they are threatened. She states, ‘Albert Einstein once said, “If the bee will disappear, humanity will have only four years of life”.

The second find by Korean artist Yunwoo Choi who creates site-specific installations from newspaper and magazines, resin and stainless steel wire, to question what is real, where he is living and what we perceive as real.

‘Are invisible things – like my emotions, supernatural phenomena, dreams, God, Tao – real? – Yunwoo Choi

He has researched the multiple dimensions of theoretical physics and is also interested in invisable and the intangible material itself. He has been inspired by the books of the philosopher Ken Wilber, along with Taoist and Buddhist texts. For Choi, ‘the answer is to express my unseeable and untouchable deep internal interests and spirit…In mundane life, some of my feelings have no reasonable cause, and there are no divisions between spiritual and secular ideas, slight and deep feelings…oneness is divided into numerous fragments.’ Often how my mind feels sometimes. These works by Choi and Maurice both have the power to change your way of seeing by attempting to question pre-existing ideals from the spiritual to the political. It is important to change the architecture of experience in the world that surrounds…