how flighty are my thoughts?

posted by laurabecker
so, last year’s catalog cover girl was the wonderer of “how heavy are my thoughts” and this year the poster it boy is the feathered one from “itching of the wings”, which makes it interesting that these two pieces were strangely similar.
a quasi-academic setting. a mix of live presenters and documented research. a query into the weight of existence which has no matter (e.g. life, desires, thoughts) and frivolity presented as weighty.
in a sense, i feel like last year’s piece was for beginners and this year they’ve upped the ante, because while ivana mueller’s piece was stimulating, it was charmingly simple enough to not actually be very heavily thought provoking, vivarium studio’s piece was much more complex and literally more layered to necessitate you having to think about it. and by thinking about it, you realize how charmingly frivolous it was considering the depth of its issues. the two stand out documentary film clips included a woman who had to interrupt the interview to take a phone call in which she discussed the mundane aspects of dealing with her father’s death, then cheerily asked “and how are you?”; and a man who had written a song about people liberating themselves from manipulation and creating a revolution to make the world not suck so much that he thought should be sung to a “cheerful tune”.
and while pondering man’s yearning to fly seems pretty light, the accompanying thought is of the tragic potential of man’s ability to fly on the eve of the fifth anniversary of september 11th.
thank you vivarium studio, thank you for providing another reminder of all the evidence that’s out there that art is therapeutic in tough times. thank you for your layers, your subtle puzzles and your soothing stories. thank you for providing another reminder to live and explore life seriously, but in a silly way. it gave me just the lift i needed.