Almighty painter

Chapter 635 Curation
“Having more wealth than the average person can give you more choices than the average person, but that doesn’t mean you have a braver heart than the average person. Many people mistakenly confuse the two.”

"Ms. Sakai, you have one million, so you can buy 10,000 romantic roses, and use the remaining money to buy 10,000 coconuts, eat one and throw one away. But I was born with only ten dollars, so I can only choose to buy a bouquet of roses or a coconut to fill my stomach. If I have one, I can't have the other, and I can only choose one of the two."

She shook her head.

"Look around us. When the two of us were drinking coffee at Starbucks, there were actually people everywhere on the streets of this city who only had one dollar or even five cents in their pockets."

“Remaining steadfast in the face of life’s pressures, always facing your own heart, and giving everything for what you want is the real courage.”

"you are not."

Katsuko Sakai still sat there calmly, ignoring Mona's ridicule.

It seems that he doesn't want to make excuses.

It seemed that he felt there was no need to defend himself.

She was just observing Mona's expression. At this moment, Miss Sandenu's expression still carried the calm refinement that was unique to the other person.

"Painters often make a mistake when collecting materials, because if a person's face does not have any extra expression, they will think that the other person has no regrets or is not sad." - Shengzi suddenly remembered a reminder she had read in a book.

"Then congratulations, you made a brave choice and got what you wanted." Katsuko Sakai spoke slowly.

"Brave? No, I did try my best to achieve my goal."

The girl paused and said, "It was only today, when I was sitting at the coffee table with my acceptance letter in my hand and realized that I should be happy but I am not, that I realized... I did the second half of this sentence but not the first half."

“When I held the coconut in my hand, even though it was a heavy golden coconut, I was still thinking about the past. It was then that I suddenly realized that perhaps I had made a mistake about what I wanted from the beginning.”

Mona said as she drank her coffee, "So, I'm not brave either."

“I have never really faced my true inner thoughts. I have always pretended to be honest and didn’t dare to express them.

"It's just that there's no point in saying all this now. If I could have another chance in life, I would make myself braver, but there's no next time for some things."

That evening.

Looking at Katsuko Sakai and Weijing Gu standing together next to the tennis court.

Mona understood.

Many words seem light and only take a few seconds to say, but you actually only have one right opportunity to say them in your life.

Their hearts are like cartoon characters standing on two asteroids flying past each other in the vast universe.

The little man has only one chance to jump from one asteroid to another.

Only at that moment are you in communion.

The past is the past.

Even if it is only a few months, weeks, or even days late, it has already gone bad, spoiled, sour, and smelly.

Forcing yourself to say it out loud would only make both of you feel embarrassed.

Further back.

Perhaps some celestial bodies will be like Halley's Comet and the Earth. After a generation of vicissitudes and changes in the world and the people, we will meet again inadvertently among the human world.

Or maybe.

They will each go their separate ways in the dark, deep and empty universe and never come back.

"Ms. Sakai, I invited you here today," Mona said.

"Ok?"

Shengzi blinked.

"Don't you understand yet?" Mona shook her head. "What I said today is for you, not Gu Weijing. This painting is also left for you."

Mona was clearing the table.

She folded the Myanmar Mirror on the table and put it in her backpack, but did not take the sketch.

"I know that I was able to join the advanced class, including your mother's recommendation letter, because of you. I don't want to thank you, but... I have to thank you. You gave me a letter of recommendation, so I'll give you this painting as a gift."

Mona stood up.

"You are born with more resources than me. What I try so hard to get is just an ordinary life to you. But when you see this painting, maybe you will understand--"

"Some things everyone knows are precious, such as getting into a university and having a good future. So I tried my best to grab them. Because I know that if I miss it, I will never have such an opportunity again in my life."

"However, there are also some things that fill your life every day, so familiar that you have become accustomed to them, so common that you feel that losing them is insignificant. So you don't realize that this is also something that only happens once in a lifetime. One day, if you miss it, no matter how much you want to go back to that day, to that lawn, it will never come back."

Mona stood up.

Dragging the suitcase to the door of Starbucks.

She opened her umbrella at the door.

He looked at the airport opposite quietly for a moment, and suddenly spoke, but I didn't know who he was talking to.

"As I said before, I have been preparing for an opportunity like London College of Fashion since I was a little girl in primary school. I have waited for this opportunity for twelve years."

"It suddenly occurred to me that I also knew Gu Weijing when I was in elementary school, when I was still a little girl."

"We attended extracurricular classes together, went to the amusement park together, and took photos together in the photo studio. In fact, I waited for him for twelve years, but I missed him in the last few months."

Say it.

Mona dragged her suitcase towards the airport entrance.

Katsuko Sakai sat there, watching her figure disappear in the rain.
-
1.5 time zones away, east of the Burma Sea.

While Yangon was shrouded in gloomy and dreary rain, it was also raining in the Lion City, also affected by the low-pressure cyclone in the Pacific Ocean.

The Esplanade is a busy scene with bright lights.

“Quick, quick, quick, move this shelf in. Be careful not to let these exhibits borrowed from the National Art Center get damp. Put them in the warehouse in Area A2 first. We’ll plan the exhibition area in a few days…”

"Be careful with the wires on the ground. The lighting guide here needs to be redone..."

"Mr. Tonks hoped that the layout of the main exhibition area would be simple enough, and that the space for artists to create would not be obstructed by artificial divisions of the exhibition space. He hoped that the main exhibition stand would be shotgun-style, so that a bullet could be shot from one end of the exhibition area to the other without any obstruction, and the same was true for the audience's sight."

……

After four or five years of preparation, postponement, planning and extension.

The 7th Lion City Biennale, which was delayed due to the epidemic, has finally reached the final stage of venue preparation before the opening of the exhibition.

Government officials, curatorial assistants, lighting technicians, scholars from the art center, security guards from the insurance company, decorators... Dozens of men and women gathered in the huge visual arts exhibition hall of the Esplanade, forming their own small circles to handle the work at hand.

The welding torch flickered with sparks.

There were people climbing up and down the shelves.

Some people gathered in twos and threes, holding folders and concept drawings in their hands, discussing something.

Everyone was absorbed in the exhibition, except for Micah Tonks, the British co-curator, who stood alone in the upper gallery of the visual arts gallery.

His eyes dropped over the railing, looking at the people below who were busy like a colony of ants.

"Oh, I'm so tired."

The British uncle sighed in a low voice.

Planning each art exhibition has its own difficulties and its own charm.

Tonks served as a judge at the Berlin Film Festival in the early 2000s.

In recent years, when I went to the Venice Biennale, I often went to see the Venice Film Festival under the Biennale.

In comprehensive comparison.

The difficulty of film festivals lies in coordination.

Coordinate the order of screenings of numerous films, coordinate the order in which celebrities walk the red carpet, and coordinate the order in which audiences enter.

If the former is not negotiated well, the director is likely to start a fight; if the latter is not negotiated well, the stars and their fans are likely to fight each other.

If you are unlucky, you may not even know the reason but the director starts beating the audience, in which case you need to call the police.

If you are unlucky, you may see the audience rushing to beat up the director (note), and then you will need to call an ambulance.

(Note: The famous Yugoslav director Dusan Makayev was once beaten by the audience at a screening at an art festival.)
If you're even more unlucky, there's even a chance that a director who hasn't won an award might suddenly jump out from the side of the road and beat up the judges.

This will train your nerve reaction speed and hand-to-hand combat ability.

If you are really unlucky, the judges may receive a bomb... However, fortunately, there is usually nothing you need to do about it. Even if they use a shovel to pick you up from the ground, that is the job of the undertaker.

Venice, Cannes, Berlin and other world-renowned large-scale art festivals.

The organizing committee receives various threatening letters every few days.

"You dare to give an award to such and such a film. This is a blasphemy to art. The art festival has been tainted and corrupted by idiots like you. If it really wins the award, you all will die! Die die die die die die—"

"How dare you not give an award to such and such a film? This is a blasphemy to art. The art festival has been tainted and corrupted by idiots like you. If it really doesn't win an award, all of you will die! Die die die die die die—"

"So-and-so" on several threatening letters from different senders.

Often it’s the same one.

Very frustrating.

Especially the film festivals in France, where every year some organization comes out and claims to plant bombs.

Even if there are special police everywhere walking around with wolfhounds.

It is not the first or second time that the Cannes staff has found a big bomb while cleaning the venue.

It has almost become a traditional custom nowadays, and everyone has become accustomed to it.

French audiences are now well trained to watch the SWAT rush over to search for explosive devices while drinking Coke and eating fried chicken.

Talking and laughing.

Although if the film festival is not run well, it is easy to lose your life.

Tonks still felt that this kind of purely static art exhibition, painting exhibition, was more tiring.

Running a film festival is like running a zoo.

The hard part is the social aspect, how to lock up a bunch of directors, actors, and judges in a film festival like elephants and giraffes, and stop them from messing around there.

Then it is Amitabha.

There have been some harsh reviews from curators.

It was much easier to hold a film festival in Europe in the 1980s than in the 1970s. The specific reason is very simple and darkly humorous.

AIDS.

When AIDS came, everyone suddenly became quiet.

Everyone stayed in the hotel every day and didn't go anywhere. No one knew who was sick and who wasn't. It was just like a Werewolf game.

Don’t dare to make random appointments, have random affairs, or play around randomly.

If you are asked to participate in any activity, just go and participate in that activity; if you are asked to be interviewed by a reporter, just go and be interviewed by a reporter.

All of a sudden.

The number of conflict incidents and melodramatic quarrels has dropped sharply.

In this case, the curator feels very comfortable.

The film is there and requires no curator to do anything, just as the giraffe is there and requires no conservator to do anything.

Film is a fluid art.

Just wait for the door to close and the movie to start.

"Young men and women! Let's go see the tigers. Have you ever seen a tiger that big? Have you ever seen a giraffe? I tell you, you've got to save up a lot of energy! It's not good, so come and buy a ticket."

Just take a cup of tea, cross your legs, and wait for the audience and judges to buy tickets to watch the lively show.

The painting biennial is a static art.

The difficulty of this type of art exhibition lies in coordination.

Not only are the works on display at each booth in the exhibition art, but the creators are also the respective painters.

The coordination, arrangement and matching of exhibits; the creation and cutting of display space; the construction of the exhibition content system...even the design of the flow of people from entering the exhibition area to leaving the exhibition area, they are also art.

Its creator is the curator Tonks.

You can understand it this way.

A large-scale art exhibition is itself equivalent to a large-scale installation art composed of countless small independent "subsets" of booths, created jointly by artists and curators.

The curator’s identity changed from an old man in the zoo management office to the director of a circus.

He can't just pile the artworks on the exhibition stand and put the animals in cages and call it a day. If he does that, he will be laughed at by the public.

He must plan and coordinate all the exhibits.

A truly successful Biennale can be one in which tigers step on hydrangeas and brown bears go through fire hoops, and in which static works of art flow according to his arrangement.

in this process.

The energy and time spent by curators on exhibitions may be greater than those spent by many film festival presidents.

The rewards are greater.

(End of this chapter)