I decided to start writing blogs, there are several reasons why I am doing that in my hyper busy life. 1. I need to organize what I input every single day. – building structure 2. I need to reflect on my experience. 3. i forget so much what I did, because every subject/ profession is so highly interdisciplinary at the moment.

Yesterday I saw Rececar Rececar Rececar – a show about a young woman going on a road trip with her dad and encountering trauma triggering events. There are so many dialogues, the language is really fulfilling, giving lots of information about the past event. But not many details revealed, it gives only a overview about event. Maybe superficial is a bad word to use here, but I have the sense this show is not able to reveal what we can not see. (And we are always thirsty about what we CAN NOT see)

It made me think about German – Chinese – English. I learned German very late, two years after I already moved to Germany. After I finally able to communicate, I realized how detail-oriented the conversation is. The extrem of giving attention to random and ”boring” objects, things, events. Redundant but very charming in its flaw.

Chinese – in our literature class since I was little, the class always asked us to describe what is BEHIND the real sentence, as if every fucking single sentence needs to be deciphered. And its true, all the poems from Tang dynasty – to modern literature. A stand along pine tree can portrait some ”spirit” from the author that indicates …. – this is what we learned mostly during the class, so I wonder if its because of Chinese language is so ambiguous, this also embedded in Chinese calligraphy and painting.

Tonight I watched The Way of Seeing from John Berger – a 4 episodes TV show about how people living in 1950s see European paintings or any kind of images. His main point is reproduction changes the way we are seeing, instead of going on a pilgrim journey, the image travel to us. So it forces us today to re-examine what does image means to us. When we see a painting from a screen, we have to notice that is not genuine, it is a replication through medias, through the context provided by art expert, who is the authority to explain the art. And we, in order to understand a distant culture object, more often has to give up our own experience to exchange for ”information”. John uses the example when he visits a school and showed kids Caravaggio’s painting, the kids, without knowing so much about the artist, can directly interpret the main character can be a woman or men. This detail they noticed is corresponding to the fact that Caravaggio is gay. (Well, with one example only I do not know how accurate this assumption is) John questioned, are we really seeing the art as it is, or through layers of information provided by ”experts” in that field. But on the contrary, can we trust our own experiences, as our experiences also filled with conventions, information from the society. (It’s not unique, even we think it is)