We found ourselves in a crowded bar called cafe nick surrounded by spirits young and old dragging out long winded breaths of conversations ranging from the profane to the profound. It’s nice to eaves drop into these tumbling narratives… I can’t seem to recall any specific story, nor the faces they were attached to, as they all somehow floated into one big hazy shroud of smoke.
We asked the furniture, the walls and the paintings that hung around whether they knew who these spirited visitors were. Through their stain tinted surfaces they smiled with a texture that told us that they’ve seen crowds anonymous and familiar, stories gone and forgotten and ones that still linger. So together we observed through this clustered fog, from which extended hands, faces, glasses empty and full, I wonder where they all came from and where they’ll all go?
On the occassion of 3 days of design 2025 in Copenhagen.
Organised by @smokingdiaries
Some days have felt nameless, like a clock without its hands, the nights of one month blend into the days of another. In which void can I find my memories. To what senses can I owe my present.
yet it seems like the things felt, that are the ones which sink the deepest. Disoriented, unable to determine the point of their origin. Before any awareness is allowed to settle it, it feels like air has ran out. A threshold where the full spectrum of the inexpressible felt, pulls on you simultaneously, pulling you to the surface. A gasp, a blinding vertigo bursting white flash, disorienting any sense of balance. and with a big sigh confrinted with a scene so bright its take the eyes days to adjust.
Surrounded by light. Im reminded that its the people that have somehow found their way in front of us who are the ones that bring presence to our feelings. Who are the symbolic container to these missing memories.
to this collective glow, shining so softly upton the hills of Zoagli, Fueld by silly conversations, sometimes or most of the time bluring between the realms of absursdity and the pure. Laughts that renders the belly sore and sends the cheeks into a light cramp. Dinners made and shared that would make any grandma proud. naps pressed on by the weight of the summer heat, only to be woken by the clear salty water that rinses us anew.
even the cicadas click and clap into the evening, probably in acknowledgment to this kind of joy. The fireflies flash along to our excitement, a wink from the shadows as if they are in on something we dont yet know...
There is a section of tong choi street called gum yu gai, and it translates to goldfish market. As the name suggests they sell a whole bunch of fish of all kinds, probably even the questionable, exotic and endangered kinds. I’m not completely sure the significance of gold fish in Hong Kong culture, but as I read somewhere, its a symbol of wealth and success. Walking down this street feels like an aquarium plopped into the center of a bustling city, ordered only by its somewhat systematic layers of aquatic tanks, filled with scales coloured in varations of red, orange and gold. a colour pallete of siamese fighting fish are tied up individually into a grid of clear plastic bags, racked up and repeated through various vendors... I wonder what the streets look like from their perspective. Warped up by the plastic bubble, jailed in mid air, hanging, swimming, yet going nowhere. Standing amongst other pedestrians looking at this grid of googly eyed swimmers, somehow reflected in the tanks you’d see the sturdy old apartments scaled up behind. One cant help but make a connection to the fish trapped up in plastic bags, trapped up in our apartments, swirling within our own bubbles. In Hong Kong, 6,659 live people per square kilometer, Layered on top of each other, where famlies, dreams, joys, and sadness coexhist simulatneously. This amout of density, you can almost feel the forces of all these emotions squeezing into you, pushing you up onto your tip toes, holding you by your shoulders carrying you into a current you can yet make sense of.
As I made this odd connection, my eyes adapted to the layer beneath the reflection, mesmerised by the gold fish bobbing, weaving and flowing between each other, in a tank that feels definitely over stuffed, I make eye contact with a gold fish looking through the glass cock eyed, doing the thing they do... blop. bop. blop.