Calendar
Calendar
The HUM calendar features exhibitions & events by New Zealand arts practitioners working or living abroad.
Signe Rose at Treignac Project
Treignac Projet, Treignac, France
21 June —
15 September 2019
A few years ago, the stronghold of Midsummer magic hit me. I suddenly understood the significance of holding onto its abiding traditions: picking, assembling, and weaving flowers into bouquets and wreaths for oneiric effect. See, the Scandinavians believe that on Midsummer Night’s Eve, if you pick twelve wild flowers to put underneath your pillow, you will see your true love in your sleep. Though I don’t know what to say about true love’s apparition, except that it sounds like an old wives’ tale, the idea that acts of accumulation could generate personal and mythic meanings offered up a compelling method of exhibition making—all about creating links and perceptions, as Jonathan Blow said of his time-reversible video game Braid, where the real magic takes place “subjectively, in the player’s mind.” I thought about how cultural shifts morph fairy tales by interlacing contemporary angst into the familiar fabric of bedtime stories, and how such narratives take on projective valence.
A few years ago, the stronghold of Midsummer magic hit me. I suddenly understood the significance of holding onto its abiding traditions: picking, assembling, and weaving flowers into bouquets and wreaths for oneiric effect. See, the Scandinavians believe that on Midsummer Night’s Eve, if you pick twelve wild flowers to put underneath your pillow, you will see your true love in your sleep. Though I don’t know what to say about true love’s apparition, except that it sounds like an old wives’ tale, the idea that acts of accumulation could generate personal and mythic meanings offered up a compelling method of exhibition making—all about creating links and perceptions, as Jonathan Blow said of his time-reversible video game Braid, where the real magic takes place “subjectively, in the player’s mind.” I thought about how cultural shifts morph fairy tales by interlacing contemporary angst into the familiar fabric of bedtime stories, and how such narratives take on projective valence.