Chen Sisters Looking At Things

👀AN ARCHIVE OF THINGS WE'VE SEEN. 👀 We are a photographer and a writer living in Chinatown. We look at things all day and discuss those things over breakfast the following day.

[chensisterslookingatthings]

i got to visit the smithsonian natural history for the first time yesterday. i nearly wept from joy. i'd gone there looking for exhibits on colors, mollusks, rocks, birds, all things i'm currently writing about, and i received everything i wanted in such massive doses i had to leave before i could absorb all of it.

there's a grand rotunda with taxidermied birds that have passed through DC, including two passenger pigeons and a carolina parakeet, both now extinct. the color exhibit featured a first edition copy of goethe's theory of color (1810), information about how royal purple dye was first made (by "milking" mollusks), a radioactive specimen of fiestaware that got discontinued in 1944 bc the orange-red glaze had uranium in it.

i saw a little girl put her hand on a meteorite, teeth almost clattering: "this is really from outer space??!" i saw another girl, wearing thick coke bottle glasses, lean in close to look at a taxidermied snow owl: "i always wanted to see one of these close up..." i saw a smart couple gazing at a composite satellite image of light pollution, discussing energy-saving technologies. i saw families of all backgrounds (including a guy dressed as a cowboy) milling around, reading placards about ocean currents, coral bleaching, geologic time, and why global warming is definitely real. 

i kept thinking: this is what public funding can build. the smithsonian museums are totally free. there isn't some arcane guilt-ripping suggested donation courtship dance at the entrance. in the cafeteria, all the food is priced decently and all the utensils, plates, etc, are compostable. this is stuff you can do on a massive scale if the underlying motive isn't profit. there aren't gift stores around every corner selling terrible products made out of plastic and sugar. 

the founding impetus for natural history research museums like the smithsonian may be imperialist and problematic, but I still think there’s a lot of potential here. the smithsonian is about 60% federally funded. what if we had good public high quality museums and research institutions and libraries everywhere? i was feeling really good when i walked out, but then i turned the corner and inadvertently walked into the trump international hotel. the building had black awnings that looked like evil flags flapping in the wind. barricades had been erected all around the entrance. the people walking out of the hotel hurried into hired cars. the building had formerly been the site of a historic post office pavilion. 

it was like getting the air punched out of you to walk from a place that contained actual live butterflies fluttering around happy children, to a place that smelled like a crypt. it was really like choose your own adventure. did we want this kind of future, or that one? did we want wonder and curiosity and knowledge or gaudy gilt banisters and cold marble? 

other people were also standing outside the hotel taking pictures. mostly with their middle finger up. very telling. i guess we were all indicating with our fingers what sort of future we preferred. i kept walking. a little further down the block, i passed by the department of justice building, where i read, etched above the doorway: 

"WHERE LAW ENDS TYRANNY BEGINS."

[chensisterslookingatthings]

11-06-16

yesterday was john berger’s birthday

i went to see “john berger or the art of looking”

at the end of the film he says he’s been drawing a lot lately mostly flowers he wants to know if it’s possible to read natural appearances as texts

is it possible to read natural appearances as texts? well, yes.

uh, are you gonna elaborate? no. i think it’s pretty clear.

+++

i was watching the conversation he had with susan sontag they were talking about storytelling their main disagreement is about whether stories are something that exists in the world and the storyteller is merely the conduit or the instrument through which it passes or if stories originate with the telling of the story

berger’s view is that he is always trying to use language as a defense against absurdity and this exasperated susan sontag a lot how was she expressing her exasperation? she said, “john, i find this very strange, what you’re saying” that’s really funny

[chensisterslookingatthings]

11-06-16

the william eggleston show at david zwirner... they printed two rooms of pictures really large they were like, over five feet across i think some people were wondering should they have been stretched to this size? but i actually really liked it. because even if it may not have worked aesthetically like maybe it’s not ideal confronting the material... seeing the grain enlarged so much but a lot of very small details that you would miss or overlook in a book or in a smaller print for me became the focus of the photograph i saw in one of the photographs a window washer in the background the photograph, for me became about incidentally capturing that person’s existence

[chensisterslookingatthings]

11-05-16

let’s praise a film that does not even need our praise can we talk about moonlight by barry jenkins? everyone should go see it. we’ve been telling everyone to watch it.

i don’t remember the last time i saw a film and walked out and thought that film is just a complete masterpiece everything was perfect the music, the story, the pacing, the acting, cinematography, editing, development, the fonts, three part structure, the moonlight! the camerawork too it wasn’t always fixed in the childhood scenes, there’s this dizzy sense of vertigo: blurry, spinning

in an interview barry jenkins talks about hemingway’s iceberg theory 90% underneath the surface, 10% on the surface they wanted to show the 90% below the surface the film did such a good job of making us feel the weight of what the characters were carrying around in the way they moved, their postures, the way they looked all of this was expressed without using language

the story was so good too. the film is based on a play by tarell alvin mccraney about his experiences growing up in miami what do you do when you don’t have any safe spaces? you don’t know what you’re coming home to every day school is also unsafe and the only safe place you eventually find turns out to be the drug dealer’s house even the house he escapes to at the opening... i love that scene when Blue finally breaks down the window and all this light comes pouring in you have to escape into yourself.

does it remind you of any other films? people keep comparing it to boyhood but i don’t think the two films are anything alike it’s a million times better than boyhood

[chensisterslookingatthings]

10-10-16

i’m thinking about what you were saying about what your days add up to bc of my recent activity on instagram remember how back in the day people were like i don’t care what you ate for breakfast but is that still the case? do they still not care what you ate for breakfast

when people say they don’t care it just means that it’s irrelevant to their life why do i need to see your breakfast? but when i see a picture of someone’s breakfast i still file it away even though i don’t need to know it like, oh, that's what they ate for breakfast i guess what i’m saying is… it becomes relevant because it appears, it becomes relevant

yesterday at the party someone was like what do you take pictures of? and i said, oh it’s just a daily log. like a journal. i guess i felt self-conscious saying it was just a log but it’s also a way to think out loud about… what someone might see while living their everyday life like here i’m going about my day not actively trying to seek out subject matter going to work, running errands

there’s this english photographer, nigel shafran who did a series that was all supermarket checkouts and then he did a series that’s all about his kitchen compost one earlier series is made up of photos taken on his way to the darkroom i think of him as sort of my introduction to these “everyday life” photographs but it’s a very specific type of everyday life domestic, suburban, white, middle-class without being aware of it, i’ve been in a conversation with him for several years

i found this journal entry from 2011 when i command-f’d his name just now:

10/22/11 How do you make life look like it's worth living?

Would it be worthwhile to photograph things in a semi-journaling manner? For example, photographing steam on a mirror, hair in the drain, the interior of a car at night, headlights shining on a garage, empty plates in the sink, Halloween decorations, broken egg shells, a yard, cars in the parking lot, forms, papers, trash, pencil shavings, keyboards, potato chip bags, dogs in the road, cans of Miller Lite on the carpet--? Right now I’m trying to think of a way to make this catalog visually interesting to an outsider. I’m interested in collecting non-moments, non-things. If I do this, will it feel like a reaffirmation of life? Maybe it will make me feel 'ok'?

PS follow me on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/anchi.chen/

[chensisterslookingatthings]

10-10-16

the window above the desk where i work frames a slice of sky that intersects a flight path for planes heading to la guardia i’ll hear the rumble and then i look up the planes are always flying through the same quadrant of sky at the same sort of angle over and over again, all day long

there’s a flat rock along the east river where i used to do crunches when i’d be on my back doing crunches, i’d also see planes lining up to land they were possibly also headed to la guardia, flying north.

when the planes are about to land they turn on all their high beams so what you see is just, especially at night, a string of lights like a constellation moving slowly downwards i used to just wait for a new light to appear in this one spot of the sky to see the moment when the plane transitions from being invisible to visible

anyway yesterday at my desk i wondered about all these planes slicing through my consciousness. what does it mean to run along the same path, do crunches on the same rock, watch planes follow the same flight path. what is it all adding up to?

i was reading deleuze on repetition he talks about how what is repeated is always a singular, particular event like monet’s first water lily, or the fall of the bastille it’s like a rock you throw into the water the repetitions are like the waves that emanate out and it made me think that when i look at things, maybe i’m always looking for a previous instance of the same thing or when i look at my journals, i reinforce certain things that i’ve noticed before subsequently ensuring that i’ll notice those things again and so certain paths of thinking get reinforced

i have the same sorts of thoughts about my photographs once you start to make note of the things you encounter you will inevitably keep encountering it like my pigeon pictures: there’s an original pigeon picture from 2010 possibly there’s an even earlier pigeon picture from 2005

but something must have made you notice pigeons even before then

i guess if you’re eating lunch and no one’s talking to you then all you have are pigeons

[chensisterslookingatthings]

9-24-16

yesterday after work i was out walking when i saw two large flocks of pigeons overhead the light was reflecting off the undersides of their wings it looked shiny and beautiful i tried to follow their path but all of a sudden i lost sight of them i’d given up when i realized that they were all sitting on a roof they lived there, in a pigeon coop i zoomed in to take a picture when a man’s head suddenly emerged he stood there for a long time observing his pigeons

i used to think pigeons did that swooping thing on their own until sam told me they were trained by these pigeon men of brooklyn it’s a sport they teach the pigeons to fly really high and dive down in dramatic loops sometimes they try to steal each other’s flocks the birds are released at dawn and dusk

last night i saw them in bushwick... it kind of looks like a school of fish in the sky their backsides are darker than their undersides so you see undulating waves of color...

mike tyson always said that he got his start in boxing when an older boy snapped the neck of one of his pigeons. and then he snapped and went bezerk on the guy he really loved his pigeons he learned how to love through his pigeons

[chensisterslookingatthings]

8-29-2016

last month i was at your apartment sleeping over and now you’re at mine sleeping over!

my friend was telling me his coworker doesn’t know how to use tabs then i started to imagine my life before tabs

let’s try to recall it. when did tabs become a thing? i remember when you always had to open a new window and there would be layers of them. it was like 3D.

[google searching] tabbed browsing adopted by mozilla....early 2000s.

so did we start to abuse it right away?

in the beginning i would only limit myself to six tabs even when i was writing a research paper i would have only ten tabs open now, for something like ‘how to make zucchini noodles,’ i will open 20 different tabs

when the tabs get too small and you don’t know what each one is then it’s too many

but sometimes the little icon will give you a hint the worst is the icon that’s just a dogeared page

how often do you clear your tabs?

sometimes i’ll open a new window and reorganize all my tabs instead of clearing them

but why don’t you just read the article and close the tab?

that’s just not possible

some tabs have stayed with me for so long they’ve begun to have sentimental value it’s like a journal or an archive of things i never got around to sometimes i’ll still read the tab and then keep it open bc i want to come back to it

list of tabs currently open (partial)

tabs open on 8/29/2016 @ 1:34 pm on iphone 6

wiki page on 2006 lebanon war gates cambridge scholarship every noise at once liz o’fallon, spiritual medium wiki page for italian occult psychedelia the hilton als profile on agnes martin “is there life after capitalism?” chris nealon’s LARB review wikipedia page of coenties slip harry dodge video “the time eaters” on vimeo BBC - “the intriguing history of ghost photography” wikipedia page on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pitchfork review of mariah’s utakata no hibi nick land google search “the rise and fall of gerd bonk, the world champion of doping” john banville review of george simenon novel dirty snow and three bedrooms in manhattan “the cognitive and neural development of face recognition in humans” angela miller’s dept of art faculty page nightboat books submission manager article on elizabeth bishop’s relationship to her therapist in boston review amazon page for ‘the geography of the imagination; forty essays” wikipedia page for ntozake shange page for DAAD research scholarships google image search for nadezhda bazhina sink review, “the untitled IMDB project” “gulf futurism is killing people” VICE Magazine facebook the legogradstudent tumblr

tabs open on 8/29/2016 @ 1:34 pm window #1 of my iMac (my primary use window)

google search: size of iphone 6 plus screen length width gmail urban outfitters black jeans on sale dropbox google calendar cash back credit cards - list the website “love is never be wrong”’s post “karl marx theory in social stratification” anna fox’s cockroach diary our condolences, afghanistan jonathan forsythe’s books google book search for arthur jafa ‘abnormativity’ wiki spike lee ‘crooklyn’ review: arthur jafa: dreams are colder than death teva women’s shoes arrowood icf center dekalog showtimes wiki dekalog adobe muse cc updates wp-admin login for angelachen.info guardian article ‘meet the artists making women of colour truly seen’ b&h sony alpha a5100 mirrorless digital camera with 16-50mm lens (black) aps-c versus full frame google video search: sony alpha a6000 digital photography review forum: a5100 vs a6000 better value fill and browser fill options in adobe muse bloggif.com create a text GIF / result of your text GIF responsive menu muse how to create an accordion menu in adobe muse adobe forums: how to resize slideshow in breakpoints? hostgator cpanel my file manager adobe muse tutorial: animated back to top button

reading your list is making me open more tabs. what does my tab list reveal to you?

it reveals that you’re thinking about many things and also that you opened the email i sent you the legogradstudent tumblr

it’s so funny all the most recent ones are at the top

i move my tabs around so they’re grouped what does mine reveal?

your list reveals to me that you do a lot of online shopping

[chensisterslookingatthings]

6-30-16

the new rivka galchen book is in this bright orange accent color in the book she talks about how she started noticing the color on her baby’s things and then she started to see the color everywhere in the city finally she sees that it’s the color of the jumpsuits detainees wear in guantanamo

that color makes me very emotional do you remember when i went on a road trip with mom and dad i was taking a nap in the back seat and when i woke up a truck was passing by it was all orange for several seconds i watched it pass by bc it was so long for some reason seeing that color made me cry

that color seems to be very powerful it’s the color of traffic cones and construction it stops you in your tracks is it the color of emergency?

no, that’s typically red it’s the color of “there’s work going on and you can’t be here”

so it’s the color of exclusion?

it’s the color of a barrier that you can’t cross maybe that’s why on it’s so many baby things and on rivka galchen’s baby’s jumpsuit

“this is mine. don’t touch it. stay away.”

are there things in nature that are this color? poppies? oranges? clown fish? oh i just googled it. it’s called “safety orange.”

[chensisterslookingatthings]

5-7-16

part of the pleasure of traveling seems to be running into things you never imagined you’d see we were walking along this narrow alley in beyoglu, a neighborhood of istanbul suddenly a man called out to us and we looked up he was standing in this cave strung up with balloons and light at first we had no idea what he was peddling it looked like an installation of some kind there was a cute dog hanging out next to a cigarette vending machine and another younger man who was smoking in the corner silently

the older man was brandishing a gun it was a bb gun. he said for 3 lira we could try to shoot the balloons the whole thing was so weird we were like ok, why not then while we were taking turns shooting the balloons (we were great shots) another guy came up and said “what’s the attraction here?” he thought the attraction was the dog.

“is that a wolf?” he asked the proprietor was laughing really hard and he said “that’s not a wolf, that’s buddy! his name is buddy! “hey buddy! smile!” buddy was smiling really happily and the guy, who turned out to be a german tourist, got his shots on the bb gun but he was terrible and he shot out the light bulb way off in the corner his aim was just terrible

“i’m a german, i don’t know about guns like you americans,” he said and all of us stood there laughing because the whole thing with buddy the wolf, the bb guns, the balloons, the german’s terrible aim, all of it was so unexpected and hilarious we were just laughing uncontrollably for about ten minutes

then it was time to leave, and as we walked up to the hotel we were still laughing everything seemed great. the world was this amazing place that was full of surprises

then we felt someone put something on our heads, like a crown it was a young boy who was holding an armful of rose crowns he wanted us to give him money we were still disoriented and blindsided by our laughing so we gave him a few lira but he said he wanted more he was syrian, he said. he had no mother, no father he had obviously rehearsed this speech lots of times he asked us where we were from in a way that seemed very adult even though he was only about nine years old

next to him his little brother was also selling rose crowns and an older brother who was about fourteen they weren’t having much luck. people mostly passed them by

i took out some US money and gave it to him. he was very excited. “all of it! all of it!” he said with a huge smile. he had a black eye and part of his face was swollen “you want all of it?” we were all still laughing. it felt like we were playing a game “do you go to school?” i asked, but he said nothing i felt like an idiot asking him that question

finally after we gave him about 5 bucks i took out all the change in my pocket it was a random mix of euros and lira and US coins, worth almost nothing he said he wanted all of it so i dumped it all in his hand, and he saw i’d saved a few quarters in my palm “all of it!” he said again. we were still playing the game. so i did. and his whole face lit up. and then he sort of saluted us.

we walked away wearing our crowns

after that encounter we were sucked back into the world this was all within a thirty minute span of time suddenly we were hyper alert and we saw everything the young girls singing on the street for money they were belting as loudly as they could, voices cracking outside our hotel another little boy was begging he was wearing an oversized jacket that was very dirty he was so sick and weak every time he sneezed or coughed he would almost fall over you know when kittens are sick and they wobble he was like that he was leaning against a parked car counting his lira over and over in his tiny palm we gave him all the rest of our lira no voice came out when he tried to say thank you

[chensisterslookingatthings]

5-1-16

let’s talk about sightseeing!

in rome i thought i wasn’t going to do any sightseeing but once i got there it was impossible to avoid just getting from one place to the next you see so many historical sites and ruins all crammed together i thought, if this obelisk was in the US it would be a huge deal but here it’s just another obelisk.

when i got to rome, i felt like i was on a film set as an american, i’m so used to imitation that the real thing just seemed like an extremely good imitation

like when we went to the galleria we said: this is the ancestor of caesar’s palace shopping forum! except here there’s a real sky. in las vegas the painted sky lights up and dims in cycles every hour throughout the day.

that part is so amazing. time speeds up in there but also seems to stop completely bc you never know what time it is.

maybe it’s not sightseeing but site collecting something to add to the itinerary we want to show that we have been there to see the real thing hence all the selfie sticks we’ve put ourselves in its proximity and so we feel a sense of accomplishment

i don’t think people are actually looking carefully but also, who cares? what would people see if they looked carefully the sight/site is simply a backdrop for the selfie

what tourists object to are the selfie stick vendors who “obstruct” their access to a pure tourism experience it’s almost like they would prefer to stand in front of a green screen or a postcard they don’t want all the hassle of dealing with real human beings

and what about your refusal to see the sights? all you want to look at are weeds in the street...

i don’t like a forced encounter i especially don’t like it when people say, “you must see this” i don’t like people to control what i see

but i saw a lot of other things: i saw an old man ripping down a billboard small collections of trash flowers growing out of the wall loose cobblestones big buildings in the distance

what is more compelling to you about these things? nobody is telling me to look at them

photo by Martin Parr (whose photos of tourists are the best) 

[chensisterslookingatthings]

3-20-16

spring starts today!

during our walk we saw a lot of animals doing their mating dances birds were gathering materials for their nests when i saw the dove on the balcony singing its song i thought of the general libidinous charge in the air when spring comes people start wearing fewer clothes

my friend introduced me the phenomenon called “cuffing season” during winter months, people stay “handcuffed” to each other to stay warm but in the spring your body can generate a sufficient amount of warmth so you don’t need to cuddle anymore

[we google “cuffing season”] “it may not be the most romantic plan, but ms. keese admits that this schedule is convenient.” “when the going get tough, the cuff gets going.”

LA doesn’t a doesn’t a cuffing season which is why i just learned about this phenomenon there is sun in LA.

[chensisterslookingatthings]

3-17-16

we were having a party in our very tiny kitchen D had to sit on the ground with the rosemary plant next to him so that somebody could sit on the sill he kept ruffling the rosemary’s head which made the room smell like rosemary

M asked: do you ever cook with it? and i said: no, because it feels like i’m cannibalizing my own child then D said: that’s ok, plants like to be trimmed, it’s like getting a haircut for them and you know what aristotle says: “trees have their butts in their air, their heads are in the ground, so you can’t hurt them”

later, we were walking along the east river and you said: “i have a new idea about resilience. we’re like weeds that you can trample on, but we can just spring back up because our heads are in the ground”

[chensisterslookingatthings]

3-16-16

things we saw in chinatown

[chensisterslookingatthings]

3-1-16

i was looking at a portrait of a young woman who appeared to be just asleep in bed actually the painting was interesting because one of her eyes seemed to be slightly open it was a deathbed portrait

[we did some research about the portrait]

wow this is a pretty epic story so this painting depicts lady digby she was a famous beauty who died mysteriously in her sleep lord digby was so bereaved he immediately commissioned plaster casts of her body parts and also this portrait by van dyck

they did an autopsy to try to find the cause of her death she had been taking viper-venom wine for headaches and when they opened her skull, they found she had “very little brain” so perhaps she had some kind of brain condition but everyone suspected lord digby of murdering her so digby had to flee

he spent the rest of his life obsessed with this portrait and writing letters about her when he died, they were buried together in this magnificent tomb but there was a fire and the tomb burned down her gilded bronze bust was reported to have melted into a puddle

[chensisterslookingatthings]

3-1-16

yesterday was leap day! what did you see?

a lot of baroque art

i ate a durian it tasted like smoked tuna that had rotted a little

oh i have a durian story my friend peter and his brother were having a durian tasting party they had this friend there, maybe he was sad or something that day anyway he got really drunk before the durian came out so when the durian finally came out and everyone started eating it he threw up

[crazy laughing]

oh my god, that was not where i thought that story was going to go

[chensisterslookingatthings]

2-28-16

steffi invited me to see this movie by a peruvian director juan daniel f. molero at the museum of the moving image the film was videophilia (and other viral syndromes) the theater itself was very futuristic i told steffi i felt like we were at universal studios like our seats would start vibrating during the movie

the story’s about this girl and boy who meet online and later meet in person they start making these amateur porn videos that they upload to the internet but their physical and virtual reality gets confused

the film has a very lo-fi aesthetic kind of like, hand-held, shot on a variety of formats some of the scenes were shot with a camera phone so there’s this feeling of closeness and intimacy and immediacy but then while you’re watching them interact in the physical world there’ll be these interruptions, overlays of other screens or gifs or popups different windows there’s this virus that keeps popping up that’s infecting the image

i’ve been thinking about the end of the movie they all go to the party but she leaves in the middle of it everyone’s doing a lot of drugs, throwing up the guy takes acid and wakes up in a park the next morning and is walking home, but he finds out that the girl is missing and they find a video of him “killing” her bc earlier in the film, the girl tells the guy she wants to film a video where he pretends to kill her and have sex with her and he does and he uploads it and this is the video they find... so now he has to run away i guess the girl is actually missing it seemed she had just left the party but it’s unclear if it’s reality or nightmare and at the very end of the film, it’s a shot of the guy lying on the sidewalk and the credits roll so it’s like he’s dead... the movie’s over. it’s very interesting. it seems to be implying that the image they created infected reality and so in real life the girl actually dies. he actually becomes a murderer. on top of that, the film ends, so it’s like their image is no longer needed. they both die when the movie ends.

you only exist if you are being filmed?

yeah or like your control over your life or image escapes after it enters the virtual world? i dunno... everyone is struggling to mediate between the images they’re receiving and the images they’re creating and their physical reality.