Light tourism!

I’ve spent the best afternoon yesterday, in the eflux reading room, which is amazing! And it's such a good idea! (Why doesn’t someone start something like this in Melbourne?) It's a library full of great art books, catalogues, some things which are out of print, and hard to find. They have all been donated by art institutions and various other art/publications related organisations. Anyway, so much great stuff, that I am planning to spend the rest of the day there today.

I was flicking through another Ann Veronica Janssens' book (seems I’m becoming quite obsessed by her work - it’s everywhere here, there’s no escape!), which was all about light. One project involved her transporting visitors to a specific location where the light was considered to be of a particular quality, and it made me think about the idea of 'light tourism'. I remember reading in A Natural History of Seeing that Pissarro specifically travelled to London, in search of the light effects that were created by the smog rising from new industry and Turner was continually travelling in search of different types of light.

That’s one of the reasons, I think, that I’m so drawn to the opposite end of the world, or at least why I travel at all: to experience different types of light. To experience the different strengths, hues, qualities of light and different shades of the spectrum. It's fascinating, the way this quality of light influences your experience of space and time. Time seems to move so much more quickly here, with different lengths of daylight and different types of sunsets and sunrises. Here everything seems more subdued, de-saturated, more faint, almost translucent in a way, with pale pastel tones, apricots and peaches on the fringes of the sky… everyone wears brighter clothes to compensate…

It is impossible to capture these experiences directly, and nearly impossible to represent them. But, nevertheless, in a futile attempt, I have been recording the light on the wall here (almost everyday, but some days I forget).