Ragamala Dance Performance at Carleton

Ragamala Dance troupe put up a 90-minute performance at Carleton College.

[ B r a c k e t i n g ]

Bracketing is used in photography to create certainty-- overexposing and underexposing a shot by one stop to make sure that you get a good exposure, or rather more choices.

Intriguingly, my last few weeks at Carleton seems like a closing bracket. As I go through my days, I find myself reflecting on the beginnings at Carleton and observe that events (and my state of being) then is like a mirror replica of how I am now. (Of course, this replica is not exactly symmetrical).

But I fear that this closing bracket would make inaccessible the knowledge I captured at Carleton in the past 4 years.

unsynched cycles

It is spring again.

I remember very vividly, photographing a tree outside of Asia house last year, when its first reds started to appear in late March.

Yesterday, I saw the same pattern--two months later in the cycle of the year. I guess the earth doesn't have to follow the calendar times that humans impose on it.

Light and Colour Returns

When I brought my COMPS books to the library return desk today, I feel like a huge, heavy wet blanket was lifted. Abigail Han and Kenneth Lum who was with me to witness the 'ceremony.' Was kind enough to put up with my dramatization.

But really, undertaking this academic endeavor was a rather long and daunting process. I think I wanted to do it well and so I ended up sacrificing some aspects of my life to it. But I am I did it (because I know I would not want to go through it again) and glad that I am now moving onto a different phase of life.

The Texture of Memory

Memories, like photographs help us save our pasts for the future. But unlike photographs, memories are not packed into four defined edges of a picture frame. Fluid as clouds, memories float about in our mindscapes.

Searching for memories can be an elusive and disorienting task. The stairs we climb to ascend up the clouds of memory might, instead, lead us down. Entrapped in the soft, hazy texture of memories from our distant pasts, the cloud of illusiveness erodes the depth of perception for vivid remembrance.

But all we need to conjure is a trace, an outline, a clue, to start the synthesis of memories. Take that clue by hand and pull it out to distill the picture. As this memory becomes clearer and more definite, we will start seeing the fine details within that frame of memory: (in this case), the cold, hard feet of the bench that lend strength in its defiance against gravity, the delicate curvatures of the bench’s metallic hand that contradicts its apparent durability. Although clarity develops, the hazy shadows of uncertain steps stay watermarked in the backdrop, inhibiting a sharp focus on the details we try to remember.

Searching


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Parallel to photography, the synthesis of memories is extremely time sensitive. But unlike developing a photograph (where longer exposure composes a darker picture), fragile memories dissolve with time. Therefore, we need to allow just the appropriate amount of time for memories to be crystallized after the haze has cleared.

Synthesis

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Once this stage is done, details from memories become more organized; and within that frame emerges exquisite textures: the balance of nature and how light that illuminates the bench uses its power to create dense, empty spaces of the shadows. Notice these empty shadows’ disguise. As if they were a part of the bench’s bottom, the shadows flow into the very objects that sheltered light from them. Like these dark empty shadows blending onto reality effortlessly, the thin film between framed and floating memory is hard to develop.

Emerging