Art on fire, p.8
Art on Fire, page 8
Dear Ms An Yiji,
I would like to express my deep gratitude to you for coming all the way here, through the fierce and beautiful heatwave and spectacular wildfires. It was only a few years ago that the largest lake in this area dried up and exposed its rough floor.
Recently, cracks have appeared in the dried surface, one of which contained a small hardened fish. The fish had multiple heads, so we took it from the lake and contacted an agency that could study it. They said they would retrieve the fish promptly, but they didn’t, and the fish remains in my freezer.
Yes, it’s because of the forest fires. The spread of the fires has left us almost completely isolated. Fortunately, they seem to be getting under control.
This is, of course, a relief. I have to say, though, when the wildfires were raging, I could smell in the smoke the fragrance of roasting chestnuts. The whirlwind of flames sometimes gave off the concentrated sweetness of melting marshmallows. Now that’s all a dream I’ve woken up from.
It doesn’t take long to get here from Los Angeles, but crossing through fire is another thing entirely. I’m astonished that you made it. In fact, you rendered the efforts of our Robert Foundation workforce useless. Our employees went to fetch you yesterday but were confused to learn that you had already left your hotel.
Another residency participant was similarly trapped due to a magnificent hurricane, but she graciously waited for us, with an artist’s optimism and understanding of disaster.
We of course expected you to do the same, but that was a mistake on our part. You are surprising. I heard you’ve worked as a delivery person — is that why you arrived with precision? Unanticipated precision — faster even than the pizza we ordered for dinner. And so, unintentionally, we caused you trouble.
We miscalculated you, and your actions took us aback. If only you had contacted the Foundation, or been a little more patient. But the bed of the largest lake in the area was even drier than usual on the morning of your arrival, its cracks legible like the lines in the palm of a hand, and in them I saw infinite possibilities, new possibilities, due to your unannounced arrival.
Even though you violated our rules against arriving with an outsider, I’m glad to know that you got here safely, and I welcome you.
We’re in the midst of a heatwave. Things are not normal. There’s a crazed sense of beauty in the air.
Oh, and there’s a bit of a problem with your paperwork. We had to redo the documents two or three times because the ones we received from our Korean director weren’t right, and there was never any follow-up, because no one would admit to wrongdoing. But this is now bygone meandering. I have no doubt that, having overcome this ordeal and finally made it to the Foundation, you will do great work here.
Early this morning, one of my roses dropped all its remaining petals. It was a light-yellow rose, named Rococo. Rococo’s finale was beautiful. Its petals were like tears, or raindrops, announcing an unexpected new start. I sincerely welcome this start, Rococo! I’ve decided to give the name Rococo to yet another being, to the fish from the lake that’s long convalesced in my freezer. The act of naming this fish means that it’s now mine. You contributed to its name, too.
When I saw how far you’ve come despite this incredible situation, I thought about the research organisation I’ve been waiting on for weeks. They have no intention of coming; otherwise, why wouldn’t they have made it here when you did?
I’ve now closed my mind to the possibility of meeting them and instead have taken the fish out of the freezer and named it Rococo. Today, the fish became Rococo.
I’d like to discuss with you where to put the fish. What’s certain is that, while Rococo can no longer swim, it has become an immortal being by nature of possessing a name. Immortality: that’s why we love art.
I hope that Rococo will be an inspiration to you over the next four months.
Well, then, I’ll see you this evening — an evening that will come to pass only once. An evening where the orange flames of our lonely fireplace dance as they burn.
Robert
The letter ended with Robert’s pawprint, stamped in gold ink. It was about twice the size of my fingerprint. After reading the tiny, beautiful English text before me once, I went through it again, carefully, using a translation app on my phone to check the strangest sections. I was hoping I had misunderstood something. This was supposed to be a welcome letter? These sentences, which seem to have been mistranslated on their way from dog to human? Robert’s letter rebuked me in the most arrogant, sarcastic tone. The ultimate victim-blamer, that’s what he was.
It seemed as if Robert had forgotten mid-letter that he was addressing me — like a dog sniffing everything while on a walk. The letter had started with an elegant salutation, but then, sloppy as a ‘No Parking’ or ‘No Dumping’ sign marred with spelling errors, it unveiled the disorganised emotional upheaval hiding beneath the surface. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but as I reread Robert’s words, I saw a tonal shift towards indignance throughout the letter. Robert seemed to swell with irritation, to hurl himself off a cliff of anger. I was confused by the ‘beauty’ he intermittently referenced. Had he understood what he was writing? The letter was close to nonsense. Why had he mentioned a fireplace at a time when a heatwave and forest fires were causing such a mess? As I contemplated whether the letter I’d received was an invitation, a warning, or a drunken screed, I looked closer at the ‘Today’s Weather’ card. The smiling sun illustration looked like it was mocking me.
‘You need a special kind of literacy to read Robert’s letter,’ said Danny, the person who was responsible for my wellbeing. He’d finally shown up. ‘Robert literacy.’
‘Robert literacy?’
‘He writes these long, classic sentences because he values formal beauty. You don’t have to assign meaning to every word. They’re just decorative elements.’
But presumably Robert hadn’t written this very human letter word by word, right? Wasn’t it a group effort? By experts who had long observed the dog’s eyes, nose, ears, tail, vocalisations, posture, expressions, and response speed, and added human subtitles to his canine communication? That was, until now, how I’d assumed Robert could communicate. But Danny said the translation wasn’t interpretation. Robert chose each word himself, down to the punctuation marks.
‘We do say there’s something magical about Robert’s use of language, but that magic is born from discipline and unbelievable effort. Robert spent four hours in the middle of the night working on this letter.’
‘I heard there’s a translator,’ I said. ‘A huge one, the size of a dresser.’
‘The black box,’ Danny replied. ‘It’s often said that Robert’s words go into the black box and come out as human language. But it’s not that simple. Certainly, in the case of letters, he revises his work in a very formalised manner. A human reads several versions of the letter out loud while Robert listens carefully and chooses his favourite. The dog has an amazing ability to distinguish between intonations. He unwittingly senses the delicate nuances of the mind. He’s not a typical dog, of course.’
‘So he does this over and over again? Sentence by sentence? They were all chosen by Robert? Then how am I supposed to respond when he says things like this?’
I tried to list some of the letter’s more offensive lines, but Danny raised his hand to stop me.
‘He has a sharp tongue. Just focus on the gist of the message. Normally he wouldn’t have written it in the middle of the night, but since you arrived without forewarning, he was strapped for time. Robert’s fatigue might have been reflected in his words.’
‘I have a sharp tongue, too,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to reply. He won’t read it anyway.’
The best thing about the Robert Foundation employees I’d met so far was that they were all humbler than Robert. Was Director Choi different? He’d seemed a bit slow. He was still sending me messages asking if I had made it to the Foundation. Danny, who’d shown up late without so much as a formal apology for his mistakes or the confusion he’d sown, was Robert’s closest aide — the one who appeared in Mr Waldmann’s will. He was an intimidating man, with his deep voice and sharp eyes. He was tall and didn’t not smile, but there was something expressionless about his face.
I was a bit surprised when, accompanying me to my studio, he gave me the choice to walk down a ‘beautiful’ path that ran alongside a pond, or use the covered walkway, which would get us there faster. It was only later that I learned Foundation employees habitually used the word ‘beautiful’. I chose the faster path. Not because of the speed — because of the walkway. I needed to go back to the place the dog had charged at me.
‘Is Robert alright?’ I asked. ‘Considering what happened yesterday.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Honestly, I think Robert owes me an apology. As soon as I arrived, he jumped at me.’
Danny listened and then called someone on the phone before apologising to me, but the whole gesture seemed like an evasion of responsibility. Was he not going to report the incident?
‘That was Marty,’ Danny said, ‘not Robert. Marty’s such a rascal, Robert can barely handle him, either. He’s just too aggressive. Marty is particularly sensitive about things, and he tends to get hostile. Had you eaten pizza last night, by any chance? Marty can smell pizza on you even if you digested it days earlier. Apparently, he was hit by a pizza deliveryman as a puppy, and ever since then he’s hated pizza.’
When I said that I felt unsettled, Danny stressed that I wouldn’t see Marty again, that the most important thing wasn’t Marty, but rather my relationship with Robert — the dog who’d invited me here.
‘So is Robert aware of yesterday’s situation?’ I asked.
If he were, the letter should have at least mentioned it. As my host, it was his job to apologise. But Danny’s response suggested that he did not deem it necessary to report such trivial matters to Robert. He changed the subject.
‘It’s not easy for dogs to overcome their sensitivity to smells,’ Danny said, ‘but Robert is experienced. He understands that you have to play it cool. But even with him, you must avoid certain types of perfume. When we searched your luggage, we found a perfume whose base scents are on the list of items banned by the Foundation. We took it from your bag.’
‘I didn’t realise perfume wasn’t allowed.’
‘If you completed the safety training properly, you’d know. Perfume is one of the prohibited items. It could endanger Robert’s life.’
My perfume was being stored in a ziplock bag. It would be returned to me when I left.
As we spoke, we reached the site of the prior day’s incident, where an A-frame sign read, ‘Maintenance Request: Floor Damage.’ The sign hadn’t been there yesterday, and there was no way I’d damaged the floor.
‘Lots of places around here need repairs,’ Danny said, diluting the incident into nothingness. ‘We do our best.’
As we turned the corner, an artist’s studio appeared. Somewhat obscured by the tall grasses surrounding it, the small circular building resembled the art museum. When I tapped my card key against the door of my new creative hideout, it opened slowly. A pillar of light extended from a rounded skylight down to the floor. The ceiling was so high that I felt as if I’d entered the ruins of an ancient temple, of which nothing but the foundational columns — these beams of light — remained.
‘It’s so beautiful!’ I exclaimed. Danny smiled.
The studio had several smaller skylights that I could open and shut as I desired. There was a huge workbench, too. On it, a variety of tools were neatly arranged alongside a sealed gift box stamped with Robert’s pawprint. When I opened the box, the gift inside made me scream and look away. It was Rococo, the fish with two heads. Why was it here? Had Danny known about this? He quickly closed the box.
‘Do I need Robert literacy to understand this, too?’ I asked.
‘Please understand Robert’s sincerity,’ he said. I mustn’t forget that Robert was a dog. Wondering if this was supposed to be a welcome gift, I thought once again about the letter in my room.
‘The welcome gift is always changing. For a while it was flowers — light-yellow roses. This time, it’s a fish.’
‘A dead fish,’ I said. ‘It’s not exactly a standard gift, is it?’
‘Robert doesn’t see much difference between roses and this dead fish, especially considering that they have the same name.’
‘What should I do with it?’ I asked. ‘Am I supposed to keep it?’
‘Well, when you give someone flowers, you can’t control what the recipient does with them. The recipient might dry the flowers, put them in a vase, take a photo and then discard them. It’s no different with a fish.’
‘If I’d got flowers, I would know what to do with them. Robert mentioned Rococo in his letter, but I didn’t expect to come face-to-face with it.’
‘Once he gifted someone a mothball named Rococo,’ Danny said. ‘The artist who received it used the evaporating naphthalene from the mothball in his work. The rose named Rococo became a piece of art, too. The piece was made up of Rococo’s petals.’
Was I supposed to dip Rococo the fish into formaldehyde or something? I didn’t feel like doing that. After taking a picture of my Rococo, I decided that it should be put it back in a freezer. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it for now.
Danny ordered one to be sent from the cafeteria to the studio. I hadn’t expected my first activity upon arriving at my new workspace to be waiting on a freezer delivery, but so be it.
Finally, the freezer came and Robert’s gift was put in it, and the excitement I’d initially felt upon entering the studio was quickly forgotten. I wanted to go back to bed and lie down.
When Danny and I left the studio, though, there were people waiting for us. Danny introduced me to them. They were all citizen representatives of Q City.
I received a lot of business cards from people as soon as I met them, but I couldn’t tell my new acquaintances apart. They were nothing more than their various titles within the local government hierarchy.
One exclaimed, ‘Hangover Relief! You’re the artist. That painting was the best!’ and asked to shake my hand. I was surprised that they knew my latest work and, in a moment of defencelessness, promised them an artist talk. I felt a bit coerced into offering it, but Danny said to expect many more of these requests in the future.
‘Q City is very interested in our residency program. This is the first time that the Robert Foundation is working with a local government, so it’s a challenge for us as well. It may become tiresome for you. If their requests start to disturb your work, you can turn them down.’
Danny looked at the clock and said that it was time to go to the banquet hall. We needed to rehearse for my dinner with Robert. The banquet hall was its own building, and from the outside I had no idea what the interior would look like. When I opened the door and peeked inside, my first impression of the room’s design was: anything goes, as long as it’s dramatic. The door was interesting, too — very small. Maybe a metre high? Robert could pass through it gracefully, but his guests could not. Danny managed to squeeze his large body through, and I had to crouch as well. Inside the banquet hall was a rectangular table about five metres in length. Danny pulled out a chair at one end and said, ‘This is your seat.’ He walked to the other side of the table, pulled out another chair, and sat down.
‘This is Robert’s seat,’ he said.
The tabletop was completely coated with white and blue candle wax. It looked like a sugar glaze or fat drippings from meat had been applied to the surface. Originally, the tabletop been black marble, Danny said, but after Robert saw an exhibition organised by the artists Colin Nightingale and Stephen Dobbie, he’d transformed the table into its current state. Mr Waldmann and Robert had enjoyed taking inspiration from art exhibits as they designed the banquet hall’s interior. After seeing one exhibit featuring phosphorescent pigments, they’d had the walls of the banquet hall painted to glow in the dark. The walls were supposed to lose some of their phosphorescence and grow dimmer over time. At the end of one ‘season’ of illumination, as Danny called it, you could restore their brilliance by shining a light on the paint. At the moment, visibility in the room depended on how recently the walls’ brightness had been touched up, but the Foundation was planning to add lights to the room, so Danny assured me that I didn’t need to worry. From my seat, Robert’s chair looked like the vanishing point on a horizon line. Danny sat there for a moment, looking at me, before coming over to raise the height of my chair.
‘You’re too nervous,’ he said. ‘Let’s adjust this so that you and Robert can meet each other’s gaze at a comfortable angle. Oh, that’s much better. Robert can smell fear. He reads body language. Sit confidently, with your shoulders back, and look straight ahead — but don’t stare at him.’
Look straight ahead but don’t stare? That was a confusing statement.
‘Robert has a lot of experience with these kinds of meals, but you don’t need to make trouble on purpose. There are things on the table you can look at. These beautiful objects — look at them.’
First the vase, then the silver candlesticks, then the right side of Robert’s chair, then the left side of Robert’s chair. Finally, I should defocus my gaze, and when necessary, I was to move my gaze from the vase to the left side of the chair. Vase, candles, right, left — was that four-four time? It was like some sort of vision exercise. I’d never prepared for a meal in this way before.
‘Robert will look at whatever you look at,’ Danny said. ‘It’s not good to look like you’re trying to avoid him, but it’s also rude to make overly intense eye contact, so you want to continually shift your gaze.’
Eye contact was rude? Did they even know what rude meant?
