“[Édouard Glissant] spoke of the desire for the perfect shape, he spoke his language of landscapes. Only by passing through the inextricable of the world, he told us, can we save our imaginaire. In that passing there would come the tremblement, the tremor being fundamental to the passage.” (from Molly Nesbit, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Rirkrit Tiravanija, “What is a Station?”, 2003)

To save one’s own thoughts, the private as the only utopia left. We see what we would like to see, “There is a good logic in what you say, but my reality is not always going like that.” What can ‘your city’ be but a passing through, your thoughts on the train as you say goodbye, and seeing that memory was always the trick of historicity. China in the 20th century is already past. Can we save our imaginaire?

Public as a vision, private as the opening of the world. The disjuncture is that tremor, the feeling of something powerful leaving the body, even if it was only the observation of a thought.