On a wet, drab Monday lunchtime, there is a pleasing, diffused lighting-effect to be found inside a telephone kiosk, rather like a large, vertical light-table. It's nice and dry, too.
I like the palimpsest of stickers and posters that builds up on the more prominently-situated kiosks. It's an effect reminiscent of those modernist and Dada collages that were first made, incredibly, 100 years ago. Whatever did happen to that scissors-and-paste modernity?
Sometimes -- in fact, most of the time -- it seems impossible to imagine what comes next, as if we were stuck in an eternal present, facing helplessly back towards the past watching it pile up, as in Walter Benjamin's famous description of Angelus Novus, a monoprint by Paul Klee that he used to own. The knowledge that things are, in effect, changing radically in unimaginable ways behind your back is either exhilarating or terrifying, depending on your mood, age, and frame of mind.
Today, after a successful upgrade to our library management system software -- probably the last I will ever oversee -- it all seems perfectly benign.
4 comments:
Yes, but what if the new system has lost track of trouble-makers from the distant past?
Not a problem, we have learned to forgive and forget. Though people can't collect their degree until all financial debts are settled.
Mike
That is one gorgeous photograph.
Thanks, Struan -- it has a certain "flags of all nations" quality that I like.
Mike
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