Chapter Text
Subject: RE:RE:Gaara Min al-Sahrā Interview touch down
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected], [email protected]
05/11/2039, 07:39
Meeting rescheduled at 12:30.
Mishima
Subject: RE:Gaara Min al-Sahrā Interview touch down
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected], [email protected]
05/11/2039, 03:34Two introduction drafts.
Please do not make me come in at 8:30.
Attachments:
gmasintro#1.docx
INSIDE THE STONE LUNG, an interview with Gaara Min al-Sahrā
[Alt. titles: Sandcastles and Stonewalls/“Resisting the Desert never worked”/???/I will come up with more later]
Five years after the opening of its gallery in Suna’s historical centre and three years after the end of the “Green Riots”, artist Gaara Min al-Sahrā invites us for the first time inside the Stone Lung, a house-studio built in the heart of Suna’s easternmost desert, conceived first by architect Kankurō Min al-Sahrā as a love letter to the country’s landscape and ecosystem. Between post-modernism, traditional techniques and contemporary sensibilities, the 582m2 complex is, more than an ode to existing beauty, a call for new futures, a venture into the unknown — a necessary endeavour, the artist tells us, to keep the wind that inspired the Green Riots blowing.
gmasintro#2.docx
Gaara Min al-Sahrā welcomes us quietly, nigh without a word, as dusk paints its working space red. It is a good ten degrees cooler than outside, inside the Stone Lung — a full day on camel back from the capital, where once stood ‘Ayn Gidī, an oasis that was thought to have died a century ago. The greenhouse, facing south, denies that assumption, as does our host when it serves us coffee in the carved living space. It asks us if we mind the smell of smoke, and lights up a cigarette before we had the chance to answer.
Subject: Gaara Min al-Sahrā Interview touch down
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected], [email protected]
05/11/2039, 00:12Hi Mishima,
I got back from Suna this afternoon, and the jet lag is really not agreeing with me. We were supposed to meet tomorrow at 8:30, can we move it to 11:30 or make it a video call? I’m cc-ing Yasmina for the schedule, any time after 11:00 is good for me. I’m sending you a first selection of pictures, Fumiko would need you to return a selection of ten for touch-ups by Friday.
Also (as a gesture of good faith?) I started reviewing the tapes on the plane, so I’m also sending you the first edit. Parts in grey are edited out, but you’ll have an interest in some of them. I’m not sure yet on the introduction, since I can’t sleep I’ll probably send some drafts to you before morning.
Attachment: gmasinterviewtp#1.docx
INSIDE THE STONE LUNG
Thank you for having us. This is the first time you open your studio to the press, correct?
It is. The Lung turned one a couple weeks ago, we agreed it was time to let it be seen. One year is little time in the lifespan of a building, but after consideration we concurred on the more urgent necessity to bring everything it means to the light.
By “we”, you mean you and your brother, Kankurō Min al-Sahrā.
I do — we call it a collaboration, but the Lung is more his work than mine, my involvement in this project being almost limited to living inside it[.] once it was suitable enough and to listen to my brother rambling about materials and thermic qualities of soil and technologies to implement. If you want to have a technical conversation about the Lung, he is the one you should be interviewing.
On the brief we received, it was noted you designed most of the inside and the greenhouse, as well as participated with continuous commentary on the blueprints and during construction, is that incorrect?
Where did you — let me see that. … Fucking idiot. He finds humility within on the rare occasions he has to righteously brag. You’ll cut this out.
I mean, we can —
And let me look at your questions.
We sent them to you in advance, did you not receive them?
I didn’t read them.
You requested them!
My gallerist requested them. She says I suck at interviews and should at least prepare for them.
And you didn’t.
I read your other interviews. You ask good questions, which I suppose means you come up with them on the spot more often than not. I’m no good for speeches but I have things to say, and it is your job to get them out of me. You seem competent at your job.
That is very flattering.
I can’t answer most of these questions. You are a sister publication of the Architextual — keep these if you want to do a joint interview, but I think it would end up too long for print.
You would be open for a joint interview?
It’s an urbanisation project, small-scale for now, but we still need publicity — we want to get in contact with local newspapers in priority, so when the work starts the neighbours are aware of what is going on, but a broader public is desirable too.
Okay, that’s great! I will be seeing our editor in chief when I come back — excuse my surprise, your reputation precedes you. Even this interview now feels surreal.
I notice you planned no question about my exile.
That is a subject you have avoided publicly until now; did that perhaps change?
No.
Participating in urbanisation and in public cultural funding the way you do, you won’t be able to avoid talking about your lineage forever, you know? If you never mention it, people will come to assume the worse, which would significantly hinder some of your projects.
You might get some things out of me…
I might?
In a decade, maybe.
I hope I’m retired by then. You say your participation mostly amounts to living inside the Stone Lung, but that’s a crucial part of the project, isn’t it? Abraxas is cited amongst the inspirations for this project, and it showed its limitations only after being lived-in — which is something this first experiment seeks to prevent. You are in a way participating as a test subject, without which this could never have been done.
That is true. There is, in art, no shortage of unknowable quantities. Completion and reception hold a weight and a meaning that cannot be entirely foreseen ⸺ even with this first venture into this architectural techniques. The water systems, how they interact with the movements of the desert, the new filters… Some things we did not even question that proved inconvenient pretty fast, regarding accessibility for maintenance notably. This is my biggest role in the project, being its [The Lung’s] first inhabitant and audience. A work of art isn’t complete — isn’t understandable — before it is released. In fact, I’d argue it does not hold its own meaning before that point. It’s maybe less radical with practical arts, but no less true. When you start working… you start working before you know what your work is about. It is terrifying to think. That you have to start, still. If you write, you won’t know what your story is about until you’ve finished it. Art works much like human relations in that regard, meeting a person, and you might have intentions towards them, even pursuits, concepts of them that for the most part will be annihilated by the work of making the relationship, like making a statue or a portrait — you have to start, without any idea of what this will come to mean.
The only way to know is when it ends.