Feelings are or should be evanescent, like a butterfly. It is beautiful to feel and each feeling is unique to the context it graces, but if it lasts for too long it becomes suffocating. However, hanging on to a feeling or trying to get rid of it faster have the same effect; the feelings sinks in our brain, infecting our thoughts and staying with us like a moths chewing on our mind. The fact that a feeling should die is part of life as there is no one without the other. It’s memory stays with us and may come back to inspire or remind us of a lesson. However, if this memory is replayed too often, it changes as we will remember what happened slightly different each time so will the feeling morph and will stop being the feeling that inspired or thought us something. That’s when it becomes suffocating and we need to let it go to make space for something new or else, watch it slowly go on it’s own and leaving us empty.
How to watch a feeling die is a series of three works made of netted rope, of which the last two are interactive and react to movement : the second lights up and the third twitches one wing.
1. The Muse* – the feeling after we just felt it, but before we realize the moment went by and we are left heart broken (to a more or less degree)
2. How to watch a feeling die – hang in on to the moment when we felt what we did, trying to reproduce it in our life and mind but it’s never the same
3. How to kill a feeling – letting go of the feeling and accepting that it has gone as the moment in life when we felt it
*There’s a twist to this work and I hope to have it finished by the end of the month.
Also check The life and death of a rose
The joy of creating 