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Ingerid Helsing Almaas,
London, November 1996

Incongruous events are the raw material of history, personal and communal. Life is a sequence of contradictions, recorded ba memory as they occur, layer by layer; for any particular perceived truth, history can always provide the evidence to support the opposite.

From this multitude of facts, events and experiences we piece together our individual histories, our worlds, our identities, by tracing possible connections, by selecting and discarding. Much effort goes into drawing lines between seemingly discordant facts, attempting to find the lowest common denominator by which experience can be described, summarised or communicated.
In this book, the turtle makes those connections. This book is a document of a process which consciously tries to retain, rather than defuse, the tension of contradiction: each element, each twist and turn presents an intermediate, temporary point of orientation - a fact, a speculation, a relationship. The temporary nature of the insight does not make it less valuable - each statement is genuine at the moment it appears, and its justification is not in the academic value of the final, universally valid conclusion, but in the fragments, if any, it has brought up from and embedded in the memory of the reader along the way.

"Association is the revelation that occurs when physical fact and observation intersects with imagination and invention."
Graphic images, texts, overlays, of text and image: all are expressive nodes in an ongoing process of association. The material/spatial dimension of the furniture and architectural installations are presented as primary facts and experiences, not yet interpreted, without values attached, open to be viewed in fresh relation or other facts, other events, possibly leading to new connections, new insights.

The city is the densest gathering of such spatial and material human facts. The city contains the possibilities for countless new relations. Time too, is condensed in the city, as innumerable different events occur simultaneously, affected by mostly unconscious of each other.
You are walking the arcades of the city with a turtle on the leash. The speed of a turtle slows you down, allowing other life to pass you by, and facts and connections which were blurred at higher speeds suddenly come into focus and become clear.

It is the comparative speed of the flaneur, the idler, not his idleness, which gives him a different point of view, opening for insights and associations previously undetected.
The turtle is a device for exploring the city. The turtle is a device for making this book.

 

 

 

 

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