Empires & Ruins

Went to the key­note of Empires & Ruins last night at ACMI, with Okwui Enwezor talk­ing about the role of the artist as pro­du­cer in a time of crisis. It was good but not amaz­ing. He was most engaged when talk­ing about African artists and the dif­fi­culty of speak­ing without being inter­pel­lated con­stantly by the dis­course of development.

Back at home, read­ing LJ, I star­ted think­ing about some other things, other sorts of ‘ruins’. Someone posted some­thing that reminded me how close I once was to someone I barely see now. There are people in your life who are really import­ant, who mark incred­ibly intense or mean­ing­ful trans­itions in your life. And then, when some­thing goes wrong in your rela­tion­ship with those people, because you’re care­less, or you’re young and don’t know any better, you’ve hurt them in some way, or simply made a key and import­ant event in their lives a bad one to remem­ber rather than the amaz­ing one you wanted it to be… it’s hard.

Espe­cially if they won’t then talk to you about it. I wish I could say “je né regrette rien” but it just isn’t true. I have not acted with per­fect know­ledge and con­scious action at all times of my life, and I regret some of those impuls­ive moments that I thought would be funny or excit­ing and that turned out to be embar­rass­ing or pain­ful for the other people involved.

This is dir­ec­ted at someone in par­tic­u­lar, from a long time ago, but it also applies in gen­eral. I’m sorry.