Balloons released into the sky, over and over again. Perhaps they have an ideal configuration, floating up columns of air to meet just so in the sky. But if they do, we don’t know it yet. And even if we did, could we reproduce it? Once the balloon is released, we can’t predict where it will go: it is given over to the forces of serendipity and chaos. It’s a repeated action that is, by it’s nature, unrepeatable. Each time a different balloon. A different sky. Each one a possible configuration. A proposal. If this is a reconfiguration, it is an endless one. A choreography perhaps better though of in terms of a rehearsal. Or as the French say - a répétition. Répétition as an anticipation of some form of union, a mastering - a Utopia reached, eve. Répétition as a way of moving toward the thing-in-itself - of “stretching out”, with desire. Each act of releasing a balloon, and each balloon itself, existing as approximation.

It’s like swimming out into the Pacific ocean in the hopes of touching the horizon. Or throwing rocks at the moon.

“You can barely see them sometimes, the balloons. They’re just faint traces - you might mistake them for a trick of the light, a defect in the paper. A spillage or an accident. But when you look closely, there they are: balloons, captured in this moment, in their particular formation, frozen at the edge of disappering.” - John Searcy, MFA Lecturer, Department of English, Cornell University

Inkjet Photographic Prints
11” x 18”
2013