WE HAVE RUN AND COMPLETED OUR FIRST LIFE 1.0 MARATHON, FOLLOWING THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE PILGRIMS. Thank you all for your support and donations! BIG THANK YOU to the organisers too!
PS We must also congratulate Team Carter, led by one of the organisers, HILLARY CARTER who was running with his son Henry and wife Trisha. This was Trisha’s first marathon, and Hillary’s ONE HUNDREDTH!! Hence qualifying him to the prestigious 100 marathon club. How very inspiring indeed. Watch out Hillary, HERE WE COME! 99 more for us to go (hopefully within this lifetime?)! We also put up a review in Runner’s World and note that we are definitely not alone in our appraisal of the amazing event!
KAIDIE WILL BE INTERVIEWED BY AN AUDIENCE MEMBER AT THE DRHA CONFERENCE 7 SEPT- but will the confrontation come to blows?
On Tuesday, Kaidie will be at the DRHA 2010 conference at the Brunel University, Nondon. In this new 60-minute performance, Kaidie will be interviewed by a member of the audience, played by Kai Syng Tan, in Author Slash Actor Slash Audience: A Lecture Performance. Several illustrious names in the new media arts field are present – on the opening day of the conference, Stelarc – yes the legendary (hirsute) man with an (hirsute) arm onto which an (hirsute??) ear has been planted - will perform. As we speak, we are making our way to Uxbridge now. With the threats of tube strikes, we might have to run there. If we know where Uxbridge is. If it is even in Nondon. Please visit website for cost and programme details about attending the conference. See you around.
IN ONE OF HER PREVIOUS LIVES, KAIDIE WAS DESYPHUS, SWIMMING ROUND AND ROUND THE CIRCLE LINE IN SINGAPORE. The Bras Basah Station permanent public art work post #1.
* Read about Bras Basah Station on Wikipedia.
* Read about the Circle Line on the Land Transport Authority site.
* Read about the Circle Line on Wikipedia.
* More information and images of the Circle Line here and there.
* Read about award-winning station designed by critically-acclaimed WOHA.
* Look up images of Bras Basah Station on Flickr.
** LAST 2 DAYS OF THIS MONTH TO VOTE! Currently a top film in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
BLACKED OUT ENDS THIS SATURDAY! MISS AND LIVE TO REGRET.
Thank you for coming to the opening of Blacked Out last Thursday! NE7, a sound artist, performed for the evening. This is a group show that we are participating, curated by curator-educator-artist Jennifer Hankin, who is pictured here placing LED-lit balloons at the entrance with fellow exhibiting artist, Lisa Metherell. Thank you Jennifer, Mr Hankin, Faye, and all other artists for the exhibition!
To complement the ‘underground’ theme of the show – given that it takes place in an arch – we shared a work that features a character from a parallel life, ‘Desyphus’, underwater. Is she sinking? Is she afloat? Is she caught in a conundrum, as it were, in time and space in a 3-minute digital loop? This work is an edited extract of a chapter from a 29-chapter large-scale permanent projection in the Bras Basah subway station, located in the centre of the Arts and Heritage District in Singapore, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. We will be talking more about this work in the weeks to come.
Do come and catch this and works by 8 other artists at Blacked Out! Hurry, for it ends this Saturday.
** Currently one of the top competing films in the War of Films contest with 100 votes: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. **Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
WANNA APPEAR ON THIS AMAZING BLOG? COME TO THE PRIVATE VIEW of BLACKED OUT, THURSDAY 19 AUGUST 18:30 onwards. LIVE MUSIC, WINE – AND GREAT ART, OF COURSE. KAIDIE WILL SHOOT YOU!
Curated by artist-curator-educator Jennifer Hankin, Blacked Out is an exhibition in which 9 artists explore light in a blacked out urban setting. This group show is held at Arch 897, Holyrood St, Nondon SE1 2EL. The show opens this Thursday, and lasts for the next few days.
We will share a video loop, its Nondon/ London premiere. In a parallel world, Kaidie is ‘Desyphus’ (Sisyphus + Decipher), riding infinitely in the Circle Line in an island. This clip, filmed by professional diver William Ong, is a edited variation of a chapter from the 29-chapter The Amazing Neverending Underwater Adventures!, a large-scale permanent video installation in the Bras Basah Station, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority in Singapore. The music is composed by Philip Tan.
As usual, we will be there with the memory trapper of a camera. So please remember to say and smell of cheese. Please self-invite. Bring friends – if you have any. If you haven’t, employ some. Otherwise, bring your partner, husband, boyfriend, wife, girlfriend, lover, lovers, ex-lovers, concurrent lovers, children, grandchildren, cousins, nephews, nieces, grand nieces, longlost grand nephews, father, mother, father and mother-like figures in your life, stepparents, foster parents, step sister, distant brother, halfdaughter, pets, etc, and claim that they are your mates. We will be busy snapping amazing shots away, and publish the more amazing ones on this amazing blog over the weekend. So if you wish to have the gratification of seeing yourself appear on this amazing blog, COME! We look forward to running into you.
** Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
TRANS-DIMENSIONAL RUNNING FOR OUR LIVES! A ROUGH GUIDE: IN THE CHAOSMOS OF OUTSIDE/IN. Or: Why running is an excellent tactic for the urban dweller.
** Breaking news: Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
As we ran about in our neighbourhood on voting day May 2010, we found something found, and not lost. For a change. But perhaps she was unwanted, as it had been more than 2 weeks. Or perhaps she was the one who decided to leave, to have a new place to dwell.
In the physical, primary world of Life 1.0[1], running as a means of navigating the urban landscape has the clear advantage of not increasing our carbon footprints. While this single reason should be compelling enough to persuade the uninitiated, there are several more reasons – philosophical, poetic, psychogeographical, personal and political – why running is an excellent tactic for the urban dweller.
When we run in the city, we are able to personalise what could otherwise be an anonymous, alienating and brutal landscape. While located as an extension of the long traditions of walking (Benjamin, Debord, Richard Long, Lake District writers, Herzog et al), reality becomes more heightened for the runner (with the increased heart rate, speed, physical duress et al given the high impact activity). As an everyday (and legitimate and safe) activity, running departs from other urban tactics such as parkour, skateboarding and grafitti.
We can outrun our fears and danger when we run in the city. We could allow ourselves to be intimidated by the oppressive Barbican buildings and its heavily concrete surroundings, or, we could find our own ways around it, by running it. Running through a council estate in Peckham enables us to conquer our insecurities and paranoia, real, imagined or simply rumoured. If we have no physical advantage over another person (especially if one armed with a weapon, a hoody and ugly tracksuits, a fighter dog or ill-intent), like the Kalahari endurance hunter, we understand that we have our tenacity to rely on, that will allow us to outrun any potential matters of life and death.
Let all the 10,000[2] CCTVs in London follow our movements, for we will register as nothing more than blurs, as if in a Marinetti painting. Haussmann built broad boulevards that were not only beautiful for the flaneur (including those on hashish) to stroll on, but easier for Napoleon’s troops to run down delinquent Parisiens. We could theoretically outwit that, by running through it, as Lola did Berlin, not once but thrice, in Lola Rennt (Tom Twyer, 1998). (Indeed, Lola not only made us see different faces of Berlin, she overcame her useless lover’s problems and overturned her own fate). In precisely-built concrete jungles, the runner can find small ways to defy grand narratives, by running and discovering unknown alleyways and pockets of areas that are neglected. For tightly controlled cities that have been infamously described as having chaos is that is ‘authored’ or absurdity that is ‘willed’, running is a gesture that we can adopt as a comeback (also to the one who described it as such). If we have nowhere to run to, or to run away from, we can discover new spaces within a difficult system, to run. This is one way to ‘not let the bastards grind us down’, as the angry young Arthur reminds us in Sillitoe’s other Kitchen Sink classic, Saturday Night Sunday Morning.
Running also offers a refreshing filter for us to explore a foreign city. When we run in a new city, we interpret landmarks in ways that differ from the overexposed versions pushed forward by tourist books and postcards. Being literally and metaphorically on the ground, we can also run into places – including those that are filled with chaos and absurdity – that would otherwise be whitewashed from the glossy official or so-called authoritative versions. Exposure to the unedited and un-Photoshopped places can open our eyes, ears and minds to other, perhaps more meaningful micro-narratives than the overarching ones.
As runners, we also cease to be taken as ignorant foreigners or exotic Others who are vulnerable, helpless or simply irritating (although we now irritate in other ways, by for instance, ‘endangering the lives of other [slow] users of the pavement’, and so on). While we have previously seen how remains vital to assume the ideological position of an outsider, it is also strategic to look like a local every now and then. Other tourists or even locals ask us for directions, as if the runner has a greater authority on the given site. Indeed, we do.
Virtually anyone can run anytime, anywhere. While it remains unfathomable how the ‘female species’ are still viewed as ‘the weaker sex’ in the 21st century (this is a separate discussion that warrants another 2010,000 theses, and more, but not this one), running is a method in which the female urban dweller could subvert this tiresome outlook. While the female runner is still likely to be spectated upon, she is soon gone, away from any actual bullying that might have befallen someone in a slower mode of navigation. In return, we can enjoy a few moments of tokenistic reciprocations of taunts (after all, we have been at the receiving end from the beginning of time, since having allegedly been created from some spare rib, according to one best-selling storybook), by deliberately making eye contact with the male spectators, but swiftly sprinting off, as if saying ‘catch me if you can’. They do not, and / because they cannot, and they know it only too well. Hence, the look of impotence. A female runner navigating the big city alone can be a sign of physical and mental strength and confidence, thereby warding off any unwanted attention. Or, perhaps it is the face of intense concentration, or simply the excessive (and offensive) perspiration (and animalistic panting) of the serious female runner that desexualises her for the male spectator.
One female, foreign urban-dwelling runner is always warming up. Left: June 2010. Middle: April 2010. Right: May 2010, with our Garmin Forerunner 405 with a broken strap (due to our excessive perspiration, perhaps), here seen taped down to our wrist. We try to use brown tape instead of say, black gaffer tape, for aesthetic purposes as the former can blend in with the colour of our skin. You could not have seen the tape had we not pointed it out, could you?
Running in the city, we produce our own desire paths that subvert tracks laid out for us by the city planners. Should we have a Global Positioning System (GPS) device, we are also able to literally draw our own desire paths. In this way, we create our own unique marks in the midst of the concrete jungle. Akin to the graffiti artist’s surreptitious insignias on walls or trains (or the dog’s trail of urination in the streets), GPS drawing allow us to register our place and existence in the urban landscape. These new tracks, and indeed maps, can be shared with the online community on GPS-sharing sites[4], and further modified collaboratively[5]. From these, further mashups can be created. Like the Situationist tactic of deliberately reading a map upside down, the trans-dimensional runner can appropriate the mashups in innovative ways. In this manner, a lively Life 1.0-Life 2.0-Life 3.0 translation process is generated, all in turn allowing us to return to explore, question and understand our relationship with the city, and indeed, the builders of the city.
The glories of GPS aside, running in a city that we are unfamiliar with without a map can be liberating. Even in a city that we think we know, running without a map can open our eyes, ears and minds in new ways. In an age in which every frontier has been marked, mapped and fully known, such are small ways in which we can re-imagine and re-assess the environment that we live in, as well as its dwellers, including ourselves.
Running in the city, we can run away without physically away. Our minds travel while we remain fully embedded in the urban din. That it is neither illegal (as graffiti is), esoteric (as tai-chi is), extreme (as base jumping is, in which people jump off skyscrapers), technically-complex (as parkour is) or requiring special equipment (as nordic walking does), is the forte of running. Running is so simple as to be banal. While the likes of Roger Deakin, Byron and Martin Amis have made the activity of wild swimming sound lyrical, that it necessarily takes place outside the city, in somewhere unchartered and, indeed, wild, makes it escapist. With running, we can remain fully within a / the system. The ability to conform to a system while playfully questioning it, is an important point of the tactic of trans-dimensional running. Rather than to deny the city or reject reality, running allows us to opt in and play by the rules of the games, while slyly overturning them in personal but powerful ways. Running allows us to take ownership of a place that can be otherwise intimidating and prohibitive. By running, we see the city unpack itself in new ways that in turn also open us up.
Kaidie's desire paths for the month of May 2010.
This is an edited extract from a chapter. Where on googleearth does Kaidie do her writing (and some thinking)? Where is the place in Nondon that inspires us to generate such mindblowing, worldchanging, teethbearing words of wisdom?? To find out, read the next post!
[1] The various lives have been defined in the following ways in this thesis (as of 10 August 2010): Life 1.0 refers to the primary, physical world, ‘reality as it is’. Life 2.0 refers to the realm of imagination, ‘reality as I like’, as well as realities made possible by Web 2.0. Life 3.0 points to our current hybrid, mixed and augmented realities made possible by Web 3.0. Life 4.0 refers to ‘Web 4.0′ and other future technologically-enabled realities, as well as other cycles of our lives to come, in the form of transmigration.
[2] Justin Davenport, ‘Tens of thousands of CCTV cameras, yet 80% of crime unsolved | News’, London Evening Standard, 19 September 2007 [accessed 9 August 2010].
[5] Such as open source software Qgis
NONDON ON THE RUN: SUMMER 2010 #1. NORTH BY NORTHWEST, AND SOUTHEAST, AND SO ON. 25 July – 1 August.
** Breaking news: Currently #6 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of screen. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
Restlessness is a stubborn dis-ease of ours , but if there is any season that makes one itch more than usual, it has to be Summer. As we crave for a respite from our beloved Nondon , even our loyalty for our dearest Regents Fark is wonky. The comfort of familiarity becomes repulsive. Also, only running at our favourite fark shields us from other textures, tastes and terrains.
In our continuing effort to train for our first marathon in September, as well as to find means to run away from Nondon without physically being able to do that just yet, we have been using running to explore different parts of Nondon, to see Nondon in new ways that we would not have had. And as temporary respites – quickies, if you will. In these runs, we work on distance and terrain, and put speed aside, especially since we often have to stop several times to ask for directions, or stop to read one of those map boards (or whatever they may be called?) installed in the streets. This being Summer, we plan some of our runs heading towards lidos, and have a dip as well.
We made several trips last week, in all directions. On 25 July Sunday, we ran 20.01km along the canal heading westwards. On Monday, we did 9.01km at our usual Regents Fark. On Tuesday, we walked 13.39km South, to the London Bridge area, to survey the space that we will exhibit in a couple of weeks. On Wednesday, we went North, running 24.06km to the rather ravishing Hampstead Heath, including a freaking %$£££^%X# freezing 1.1km swim at the Parliament Pill lido. On Friday, we ran our first ever 30km, heading westwards to and from Kew Bridge. On Sunday, we hit the canal again, this time heading towards the exotic east, but missing exactly 98% of Victoria Fark (15km).
How nice, and how different it was, and hence it was nice. We went to places that we would never have imagined to be Nondon, and ran on terrain that were different, difficult. If you would accept the argument that Nondon is generous enough a city to accomodate and indeed celebrate many variations of itself, then the existence of non-Nondons within Nondon, makes complete sense. In the same line of logic, Nondon, ie Non-London, is completely London at the same time. In Kaidie’s cosmology of the world, that ‘A’ co-exists with not-’A’ - and often in the same freaking %$£££^%X# space – is perfectly logical. There is (some times frustratingly) no conflict.
‘Fresh sensations, new emotions, are valuable. Can we experience this in everyday life, without endless novelty, which in itself becomes pointless? […] We need that freedom’, as Jeanette Winterson says. ‘Life is too short to save for the holidays’. Indeed.
Serpentine Lido and Hampstead pond, here we come next. [Perhaps even Richmond and Tooting Bec, but we will have to budget getting there (on foot), getting back here (on foot), and having a dip (as aromatic slices of duck sandwiched in slim slices of pancake) as well. Would we have enough energy? ...] We need to plan another 5 sessions of long runs, of 30-37km each, and 1 session of 42km. Would you, my Dear Conspirators of Pleasure, have any recommendation of which way we could possibly head next? Some where not too polluted. Somewhere fresh. Somewhere that would excite us. And you, of course.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION TOWARDS KAIDIE’S RUN FOR THE ROTARY CHARITIES? KAIDIE’S 1st LIFE1.0 MARATHON #1
** HOT OFF THE microwave OVEN: As of 8 August, 1) CHIN HWEE TAN, 2) GREGORY BEITCHMAN and 3) JAMES ODLING SMEE have offered to make a contribution! With these financial and emotional blackmails, the pressure/pleasure is on... ... Chin Hwee's offer is particularly good, so we will devote AN ENTIRE POST on it!! Look out for it in the next couple of days! IF YOU MAKE A DONATION, AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU DONATION IS *INTERESTING*, WE *MIGHT* DEVOTE AN ENTIRE POST JUST FOR YOU!!! So hurry! (That's KAIDIE'S BLACKMAIL for you.)**
As we mentioned, we are running our first ever Life 1.0 marathon on the historical Pilgrim’s Route, in the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon in Surrey, in 7 weeks. Do you think we are terribly excited, or do you think we are excitably terrible?!
While/since we are at it, we wish to make it worthwhile for others as well. We wish to raise money for the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice and other Rotary charities. If you are keen to make a donation, please contact Kaidie now <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>! We are aiming for £100-£200. It goes without saying that we would appreciate any amount. £10 is fine but so is £1, $1, 1 euro, 100yen, or other currencies in other denominations. Please do help, if you could! Yes yes, we do understand and agree with what the sweaty Slavoj is saying, but please do your bit in redistributing (your) wealth. CONTACT KAIDIE NOW!
Kaidie ran 30km to and from Kew Bridge as part of our training for our first ever 42km race. We carried our hand-and-toe-drawn map in our waist pouch, and consulted it every now and then during the course. It would not surprise you/us for us to confess that we were still lost a few times, and had to ask about 7 people along the way for directions, including a motorbike courier outside a kebab shop, who said that he could not help me. 'And you call yourself a courier?!' I shouted. 'It's lunch time now, love!' he shouted back. 'What a pedantic prick.' I replied (not). I would have been better off asking an old lady on a stairlift. This map has been sketched on what used to be the boarding pass of a budget airlines. Make a guess which.
In return, we will thank you in this blog (and the evil Facebook, and Twitter, etc) should you make a donation! We will also put in extra effort in our training, to make sure that we finish the race, and finish it in not too indecent a time. For the past 12 weeks, we have been devoting several hours each week to running (scoff not, for if you had legs the length of ours, you would take that long, too). As we hit 30km last Friday, we are increasingly confident that we will be able to finish the 42km race. However, as for the number of hours we have to spend on the road, we are extremely uncertain, for we are reminded that the Farnham route will be hilly and uneven! Having been a spoilt pavement/tarmac runner, it is very likely that our timing will be increased significantly! We must practice more, on varying terrain!
Follow our training ‘live’! Have a look at our running routes! Suggest others! 24-30km required much mental coaxing and physical effort. We imagine the next laps of training – 30-35km – to be even more trying. So, if you run in Life 1.0 as well, you can help push our fatarses and soggy brains along by running with us, for some parts of our practice sessions!
It would have been all too easy for one to simply let one’s imagination run wild and create a purely fantastical story. What is vital in Kaidie’s endeavour is the emphasis on the Life 1.0 realism as well. We have taken upon ourselves to pick up running in real life, and as a test of this, the task of completing a marathon. In this way, we are learning and experiencing in first hand what we are selling, by conditioning and teaching our body, mind, and spirit – if we have any?? – to run.
Look out for the next posts with updates about Kaidie’s first life 1.0 marathon. In the next weeks leading up to race day, we will be supplying details about Kaidie’s fundraising effort, training development, as well as her plans for her run – Kaidie could run dressed up as a monk (thank you Duncan for your suggestion!), nun or donkey (afterall we are of the same colour and shape and voice) from Chaucer’s wonderful Canterbury Tales, but we will have to watch the erratic bowel movement if the latter (unless of course, we do an impromptu Paula Radcliffe).
Left: screenshot from Farnham Pilgrim's Marathon website. Right: Some of Kaidie's tweets in the past 12 weeks of her training.
** IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST, do continue to watch and vote for the 2 films by Claudia Tomaz about Kaidie! Episode 1 (12 minutes): Kaidie talks about her endeavour. WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW! Episode 2 (10 minutes): focuses on Kaidie’s running. WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW! **
CLOUD 9′S AND KAIDIE’S (OVERLAPPING) TRAVELOGUES
CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S TRAVELOGUE
On 15 June, Kaidie walked to Great Eastern Street to attend Bring Your Own Shorts I, organised by Christopher Birdman Dent, and had the privilege of watching filmmaker/artist/activist/writer/DJ/performance artist Claudia Tomaz’s poetically-layered film Travelogue (2008) in its entirety – sitting right next to the filmmaker! Travelogue is a beautiful 12-minute film-poem. In the place of dialogue, this is an intricate conversation, a delicate dance, between sound and images. Filmed by the filmmaker on seductive Super 8 as she journeyed from Portugal to Morocco, the film is a spellbinding. One of the most enchanting passages of the film is that of a montage of faces; the camera -and us- come face to face with the people, sometimes lingering on, other times looking away. (At this point, we think of great filmic moments that haunt: Chris Marker’s opening and closing sequences of Sans Soleil with 3 children on a road in Iceland; when the tiger speaks to the soldier in Apichatpong’s Tropical Malady, the opening dream sequence of Wild Strawberries and when fire fights rain in Mirror.)
My Dear Readers, do read about the film and watch and vote for it!
Left: frame grab from Claudia Tomaz's Travelogue, 2008. Right: Kaidie's travelogue 15 June 2010 from Kings Kross to Old Street.
KAIDIE’S TRAVELOGUE
Although we had promised Claudia to reach there early for a chat, we ended up being quite rudely late! That was because we got rather lost at the Old Street roundabout. Kaidie has a love-hate relationship with roundabouts, as she never fails to get disoriented at one, but we do love their Sisyphian loopiness (as usual). It is not as if we have never been to Great Eastern Street – but perhaps it is that we like getting lost (at the expense of our manners). This GPS track is slightly distorted, as we switched it off before we reached the venue, mistakenly believing that we had ‘arrived’. You can look at this map, and other GPS tracks of Kaidie’s Life 1.0 travels on GPSies.
THE OVERLAPPING TRAVELOGUES OF KAIDIE AND CLAUDIA
Kaidie and Claudia Tomaz first met 5 March 2010 at the Late at Tate Britain’s Game Play, at the Blast Theory booth, but have been meeting frequently in Life 2.0. Multi-hyphenate Claudia has a wide body of works that look at technology, landscape, the city and most of all the people in them, in a manner that is sensitive, spirited and never distancing. Her ‘mutant paintings’, Transient Forms are most tactile. The very giving artist has contributed many times to Kaidie’s running blog, and recently made not one but two films about Kaidie as part of her LONDON GROUND series. In spite of our individual paths/journeys, Claudia and Kaidie always have meeting points that are meaningful and striking. Claudia and Kaidie certainly have many common grounds of interests and have been keen running partners, and will most certainly continue to be. Run Claudia Run!
Do continue to watch and vote for the 2 films by Claudia Tomaz about Kaidie! Episode 1 (12 minutes): Kaidie talks about her endeavour. WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW! Episode 2 (10 minutes): focuses on Kaidie’s running. WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW!
INTERMISSION: RUNNING AWAY FROM NONDON FOR A DAY OR TWO. WHERE TO? Part II.
In the previous post, Kaidie asked where she could go for a day or two, away from Nondon. As Chatwin says in his Anatomy of Restlessness, there exists an innate need in us to undertake ‘journeys of the mind and body’. Even while travelling, as we are, being on the journey from life to death, in Nondon. Reprinted here are some of the advice we have received so far. Thank you Susan, Miss Nim (a sponsor of Kaidie’s charity run in March 2010), Chuthatip aka Chutha Indigo aka The Good Pirate aka Fisherman, Aaron and Meena (who had previously helped to look for Kaidie when she was missing)! Kaidie’s running buddy, Claudia Tomaz, is also itching to have a little respite. So, do keep the advice coming in!
Reprinted from Facebook as of Sunday 25 July 2010.
* Walking around Woolwich and Greenwich for 3.5 hours this afternoon, Kaidie realised that Nondon is the one city she is not felt strange, or different, or is foreign (one of the reasons being simply that nearly every other person is strange, different and foreign, too), or out of place (what an evocative expression), or that she shouldn’t be. This is not necessarily the case of the 102 other cities in 32 countries that Kaidie has visited or lived in her previous lives, not even the one that she first arrived in. (All that said, one of the reasons why we are employing running as a navigational tactic for our 21st century reality is precisely because we do want to always feel foreign, strange, different and never settled down. We are never at home, but are out of our comfort zones at all times, and are instead invariably homesick, yearning for a ‘home’ - or an idea, or idealisation of a home. This ‘home’ is yet to be defined, and we resist and put off and postpone calling any place ‘home’, including Nondon).
** Do continue to watch and vote for CLAUDIA TOMAZ’s film, Kaidie and The Meaning of Life 3.0, Episode 1. Episode 2 coming up!
Some of Kaidie's desired next stops (in this or other lives): Iceland (where Marker filmed the '3 children on a road' in Sans Soleil), Norway (aha, a childish desire), Denmark (for Dreyer, and not for Von Trier), Brazil (this October?) (where Herzog crossed the Amazon with his impossible task), Morocco, Canada (for Gould), Algeria (for Camus), the Trans-Siberian (for ever and ever), the Taklimakan desert (ditto), Bhutan (the happiest place on earth), Dubai (one from one theme park to an other), Las Vegas (ditto) (and travels in hyperreality), Belfast (as a city of in-between), Bilbao, River Danube (bordering 10 countries - does it connect or separate them?), DMZ , Gaza (instead of viewing from the other side in Sderot), Xinjiang, Damascus (when Peter O'Toole took over her in Lean's epic that was watched 40 times in a previous life as a child), Mexico (for the amazing Tarahumara runners), Mount Hiei (for the mad marathon monks), Greenland (for Miss Smilla), the part of Russia where The Belovs was filmed, other parts of Finland (for the Leningrad cowboys and Lordi) and Suomenlinna again.
INTERMISSION: RUNNING AWAY FROM NONDON FOR A DAY OR TWO. WHERE TO?
Hair 6 June 2010, split till Kaidie's end (uncut 12.12.2009 - 09.09.2012, after Tehching Hsieh)
In Life 1.0, Kaidie lives in Nondon. Yet, as we know, any peripetetic runner must deny herself allegiances, and must attach herself to the ethos of non-attachment. Instead, she traverses multiple terrains at the same time, double-triple-crossing, happily crisscrossing her eyes, splitending her hair and curling her toes while dipping curly fries in pig’s cheeks at the same time. So, while Kaidie always insists that she loves Nondon (and that Nondon loves her?), every so often, she must run away from her, to an other place in Life 1.0 that is non-Nondon, non-non-London. We love the city, but the task of the trans-dimensional runner is to resist liking any one place or thing too much. Also, it is Summer just now. Kaidie and her all-consuming love affair with Nondon could do with a little break.
Hence, our Dear Reader, where can Kaidie run away to, for just a day trip, this Summer? Somewhere nearby, but somewhere that looks/sounds/smells/feels different enough from our lovely Nondon. A different terrain to run, with a different scenary, that would give Kaidie a different gait and different rhythm of breathing, and to urge – ever so gently – that stubborn flu of 3 weeks to please leave her system, if not for good, for a little while.
Kaidie recalls a particularly invigorating Summer in a previous life, during which she spent a month in Suomenlinna, in Helsinki, Finland. The weather was extremely crisp, dry and sunny, the flat splendidly spacious and bright (Kaidie was retrospectively told that that was an especially brilliant Nordic Summer). Upon arrival, she was filled with a dread, assuming at once that as a lifelong urban denizen across many lifespans, the fortress island would be unbearable and boring. What arrogance. For, within a couple of days, Kaidie began a month-long routine of walking along the coasts for hours at length, as well as exploring the many tunnels. Although a tiny island, the place opened up the more Kaidie walked it, as if an endless Escher print full of surprising rabbit holes. She would return to the studio to type some notes with no particular intention. In the heady mixture of liqourice ice-cream, squeaky cheese, canons facing generations of enemies, picnics at sloping hills, dipping into the sea, rocking in ferries, blond hair, blue eyes, green eyes, blue-green eyes, and midnight suns, the seeds of Kaidie’s current life, and life story, and task, were planted.
This, of course, was before Kaidie became ‘Kaidie’.
Foam with (foamy) memory. What does it recall? What does it forget? What does it selectively memorise?
Travelling to Stockholm from Helsinki on the trashy Viking Line that Summer, Kaidie recalled Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika (1953). (Kaidie’s favourite work of the great auteur, however, is the shattering Wild Strawberries). This summer, one of Kaidie’s virtual running buddies, James Odling-Smee, tells Kaidie about another Summer with Monika, by Roger McGough (Liverpool, 1967). That summer, Kaidie’s hair was slightly longer than it is now. After she left Suomenlinna, to return home, or ‘home’, she had much of it cut.
In the spirit of summer, with Monika, Monikas, in Stockholm, Suomenlinna, Liverpool, London, Non-London, Nondon, Non-Nondon, Non-non-London, 1953, 1967, 2006, 2010, we reprint McGough’s poem here.
Summer With Monika
They say the sun shone now and again
but it was probably cloudy with far too much rain.
They say the greatest train robbery in history took place,
probably students,
who else wants to steal a train.
They say cabinet ministers and osteopaths
were particularly vulgar about this time,
they say babies were born,
married couples made love,
often with each other
and people died, sometimes violently.
They say it was an average, ordinary, moderate,
run-of-the-mill, common-or-garden summer,
but it wasn’t.
For I locked a yellow door
and I threw away the key
and I spent summer with Monica
and Monica spent summer with me.
Unlike everybody else we made friends with the weather,
most days the sun called and sprawled all over the place,
or the wind blew in as breezily as ever
and ran its fingers through our hair.
But usually it was the moon that kept us company.
Some days we thought about the sea-side
and built sandcastles on the blankets
and paddled in the pillows
or swam in the sink,
and played with the shoals of dishes.
Other days we went for long walks around the table
And picnicked on the banks of the settee.
Or just sun-bathed lazily in front of the fire
Until the shilling set on the horizon.
We danced a lot that summer
bosa nova-ed by the bookcase,
or Madisoned instead,
Hulli-gullied by the oven,
or did the twist in bed.
At first we kept birds in a transistor box to sing for us,
but sadly they died,
we being too embraced in each other to feed them.
But it didn’t really matter
because we made love songs with our bodies.
I became the words and she put me to music.
They say it was just like any other summer,
but it wasn’t.
For we had love and each other and the moon for company,
when I spent summer with Monica
and Monica spent summer with me.
Ten milk bottles standing in the hall,
ten milk bottles up against the wall,
next door neighbour thinks we’re dead,
hasn’t heard a sound he said,
doesn’t know we’ve been in bed,
the ten whole days since we were wed.
No one knows and no one sees
we lovers doing as we please
but people stop and point at these
ten milk bottles a-turning into cheese.
Ten milk bottles standing day and night,
ten different thicknesses and different shades of white.
Persistent carol singers without a note to utter
silent carol singers,
a-turning into butter.
Now she’s run out of passion
and there’s not much left in me
so maybe we’ll get up and make a cup of tea.
then people can stop wondering what they’re waiting for
those ten milk bottles a queuing at our door.
I have lately learned to swim
and feel more at home in the ebb and flow
of your slim rhythmic tide
than in the fully dressed,
couldn’t care less
restless world outside.
You squeeze my hand and cry a little
You cannot comprehend the raggle taggle of living
and think it unfair that death
should be the only one
who knows what he’s doing.
You are afraid of the big bad dark
which loiters in our room
the night it prowls about the yard
the wind howls in distress
The Tom-moon peeps through the window
waiting for the table to undress.
It will soon be tomorrow
there’s nothing to fear
You whisper,
‘ever leave me?’
and put your tongue in my ear.
Sssshhhhh…….
don’t open it,
it can only be
the enemy.
____________
Said I trusted you, spoke too soon
heard of your affair with the man in the moon,
You say that it’s all over, then if you’re right
why does he call at the house every night.
Once I paid the piper and called the tune,
but one afternoon returning home early from the office
I found you in bed with the piper.
You call the last waltz
and now I dance sadly out of your life.
Monica who’s been eating my porridge
while I’ve been away?
My Quaker oats are nearly gone, what have you got to say?
Someone’s been at the whisky,
taken the jaguar keys
and Monica another thing
who’s trousers are these.
I love and trust you darling
can’t really believe you’d flirt
but there’s a strange man under the table
wearing only a shirt.
There’s someone in the bathroom,
someone behind the door,
the house is full of sexy men,
Monica,
Don’t you love me anymore?
You are a woman of many faces
and the one that suits you best I fear
is the one you wear when I’m not here,
for when you wear your marriage face
boredom lounges round the place
Your finger sadly has a familiar ring about it.
Last night was your night out
and just before you went
you put your scowls in a tumbler
half filled with Sterodent
so they’d keep nice and fresh for me.
Monica,
the tea things are taking over,
the cups are as big as bubble cars
they throttle round the room,
the tin-openers skate on the greasy plates
by the light of the silvery moon.
The biscuits are having a party
they’re necking in our bread bin,
that’s jazz you hear in the salt cellars
but they don’t let non-members in.
The egg spoons had our eggs for breakfast,
the sauce bottle’s asleep in our bed,
I overheard the knives and forks
it won’t be long, they said
it won’t be long, they said,
and it wasn’t.
It all started yesterday evening
as I was helping the potatoes off with their jackets
I heard you making a date with the kettle,
I distinctly heard you making a date with the kettle,
my kettle.
Then at midnight,
In the half light,
When I was polishing the blue speckles in a famous soap powder,
I saw you fondling the frying-pan,
I distinctly saw you fondling the frying-pan,
My frying-pan.
Finally at mid-dawn,
In the half light
While waiting in the cool shadows beneath the sink,
I saw you making love with the gas cooker,
I distinctly saw you making love with the gas cooker,
My gas cooker.
My mistake was to leap upon you crying,
Monica, spare the saucers.
For now I’m alone,
you having left me for someone with a bigger kitchen.
In, October, when winter the lodger the sod,
came a-knocking at our door,
I set in a store of biscuits and whisky
you filled the hot-water bottle with tears
and we went to bed until spring.
In April we arose,
warm and smelling of morning,
we kissed the sleep from each others eyes,
and went out into the world,
and now summers here again regular as the rent man,
but our lives are now more ordered, more arranged.
The kissing, wily, carefree times are changed.
We no longer stroll along the beaches of the bed,
or snuggle in the long grass of the carpets,
the room no longer a world for make believing in
but a ceiling and four walls that are for living in.
We no longer eat our dinner holding hands
or neck in the back stalls of the television
the room no longer a place for hide and seeking in
but a container that we use for eat and sleeping in.
Our love has become as comfortable
as the jeans you lounge about in
as my old green coat
as necessary as the change you get from the milkman
for a ten bob note.
Our love has become as nice as a cup of tea in bed,
as simple as something the baby said.
Monica, the sky is blue, the leaves are green,
The birds are singing, the bells are ringing,
For me and my gal.
The suns as big as an ice cream factory,
the corns as high as an elephants eye
could go on for hours about the lovely weather
we are having,
but Monica,
they don’t make summers like they used to.
- Roger McGough
** Do continue to watch and vote for CLAUDIA TOMAZ’s film, Kaidie and The Meaning of Life 3.0, Episode 1. Episode 2 coming up. **
Kaidie goes ON, and ON, and ON… for 12 minutes in CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S London Ground film ‘KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0′ EPISODE 1. WATCH and VOTE NOW!
Claudia at work filming Kaidie at work. Other images are screenshots of related websites (see links below).
Multiple-award-winning filmmaker CLAUDIA TOMAZ (Locarno!! Venice!!!!!!!!!!!!) has made a film about Kaidie. This is Episode 1 of 2, in which Kaidie talks about her Rough Guide To The Meaning Of Life 3.0: Kaidie’s 1000-day Trans-dimensional Run 12.12.02009 – 09.09.2012. And talks. And talks. AND talks. For ALL 12 minutes. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! Episode 2 coming soon! (EVEN) More yakking!! Take a look at the film and do vote for it! The music that you can hear is composed by award-winning PHILIP TAN (Animal Farm, National Day Parade 2008, Football! Football! 2010). The film was shot 24 June 2010, at the Slade Centre of Research of the Slade School of Dine Art, Nondon, when Kaidie was installing her meta-map wall installation.
You, My Dear Reader, are not unfamiliar with Claudia, a filmmaker-artist-writer-performer-activist who also spins under the name Cloud 9. You have seen her contributions here, there, there too, there there too, as well as here, just to name a few! And there are many more in Life 2.0! Claudia is one of Kaidie’s most constant co-runners of this quest. Her thought-provoking feedback, insights and suggestions have pushed Kaidie and her adventure in many exciting ways, making her otherwise silly journey worth travelling.
The Do It With Others (DIWO) ethos of this work also underlies Claudia’s LONDON GROUND series, of which the film on Kaidie is a part of. London Ground is a collection of films ‘made in collaboration with selected artists of different practices (music, film, art, activism) in London underGROUND 2010. The artists invited are not mainstream ones, but people with dreams and their feet on the ground,’ according to the artist.
Booked doublefaced: This week, Kaidie's Facebook profile picture is that shot by Claudia; guess who shot Claudia's picture?
KAIDIE PAYS HOMAGE TO SOME OF HER VIRTUAL RUNNING BUDDIES AT HER LIFE 1.0 SHOW! #8 YOU CAN BE KAIDIE’S COLLABORATOR TOO!
These are but a handful of Kaidie’s running buddies – real, virtual, imagined - so far, whom Kaidie has met in her Life 3.0 in the past 7 months. There are many, many more! YOU can play a role in Kaidie’s life/ lives! Kaidie’s is a collaborative, open(-ended?) quest for The Meaning of Life 3.0! RUN with her for the rest of the 790 days! Here are just a handful of outcomes Kaidie has created with YOU, My Dear Reader/Contributer/Collaborator/Conspirator of Pleasure, so far, including by some of these amazing Nondoners photographed here!. Contribute, by writing in, sending her feedback here, giving her suggestions, sending her images and sounds and ideas for her to jam with, with you! Add ‘Kaidie Nondon’ as your best Facebook Friend Forever! Friend ‘Kaidie3rdlife’ on Youtube! Follow Kaidie ‘live’ on Twitter! Track her Life 1.0 tracks on GPSies! Friend ‘Kaidie Absent’ in Second Life! Help us make this the best run of our lives!
FOLLOW KAIDIE ON THE BLACK PATH AND DISCOVER KAIDIE’S MULTILAYERED MIXED-REALITY: Navigating Kaidie’s Metamap Show #7
Installed at the PhD show (25-30 June, Nondon), our metamap consists of 120 images and maps that we have created so far. It attempts to draw relationships between the various maps. It is also a map/documentation of our trials and erros thus far to articulate our cosmology/cosmologies. The 14-metre map also itself becomes a landscape, with small cutouts of Kaidie (or Kaidie’s avatar) running all over the wall and floor. Hence, apart from tthe graphical representations of Kaidie on many of the A3 sheets of images, the paper cutouts of Kaidie-s ‘emerge’, or rather, burst out into meatspace; and, apart from the 2D plane of the wall, Kaidie runs into the 3D real world of the Slade Research Centre (if the art world could be called ‘real’, that is), along the stairwell, lift, loo and even out into the streets. Here is one (more) map that maps Kaidie’s journeys. Follow the black lines and see where she leads you!
25-30 JUNE: KAIDIE SHARES A 14-METRE METAMAP OF 120 MAPS OF HER TRANSDIMENSIONAL RUN. Slade Centre of Research, Nondon #2
How would a map like this (created before Kaidie's birth in October 2009), be contextualised in Kaidie's wall-installation (June 2010)?
Private view: 25 June evening. Exhibition: 25-30 June. Location: Slade Research Centre Nondon WC1H UK. Opening hours: 9am – 5pm daily except Sunday. Kaidie exhibits her Multiple Mad Meandering Maps + Mandalas of her restless running across Life 1.0 (primary world), Life 2.0 (realm of imagination, Web 2.0 realities) and Life 3.0 (Web 3.0 AR+MR, hybrid reality). As we speak, Kaidie is creating a 14metre-wall-installation, a metamap of her maps of her intradimensional run. In this exhibition, there are 14 PhD and researchers on show with a wide-range of works including performance, sculpture, video installation and sound.
25-30 JUNE: KAIDIE SHARES HER MEANDERINGMADMAPS + MANDALAS. Slade Centre of Research, Nondon #1
What: In this exhibition, there are 13 PhD and researchers on show with a wide-range of works including performance, sculpture, video installation and sound. Private view: 25 June evening. Exhibition: 25-30 June. Location: Slade Research Centre Nondon WC1H UK. Opening hours: 9am – 5pm daily except Sunday.
Kaidie exhibits her Multiple Mad Meandering Maps + Mandalas of her restless running across Life 1.0 (primary world), Life 2.0 (realm of imagination, Web 2.0 realities) and Life 3.0 (Web 3.0 AR+MR, hybrid reality). As we speak, Kaidie is creating a 14metre-wall-installation, a metamap of her maps of her intradimensional run. And there is NO multimedia in this new work, only goodoldfashion 2D ’stuffs’. Can you believe that? Me neither. Well, come see for yourself. (We would have used the adjective ‘Magnificent’, in conjunction with the brilliant Magnificent Maps exhibition at the British Library, but that would not have been very Modest of Me, would it?)
See you around. Literally. Being all-rounded we can bounce ideas off each other. Jolly well.
May 2010: ever-expandable layers of reality -cum-running tracks
March 2010: an appropriation of the yin-yang symbol - or/and an appropriation of the pepsi logo.
December 2009: picture-perfect simple/simplistic venn diagramme of the in-between.
AS I TURN 6-MONTHS OLD, I REALISE THAT I QUITE ENJOY MY LIFE/LIVES NOW, HERE.
Unbeknownst to me at that time, my visit to Enjoy Cafe is to turn out to be profoundly life-changing. As I turn 6-months old on 12 June 2010, I wash down a dozen of the Aphrodisiac Sausages with Dettol. I am hit – not suddenly, but gradually, nicely, warmly, largo – with a realisation that I quite enjoy my life and lives now, here, in Nondon, in my Life 3.0. I think, and I know, that I enjoy where/when I am, difficult/diverting/frustrating/frivolous as it is. Society celebrates youth, in all its actual and mythological glory/beauty/recklessness/kawaii-ness/innocence (or so-called). I enjoyed being young when I was, but I also enjoy having travelled the journey (detours included) to get here, of being what(ever it is that) I am now, quite tremendously, in all its imperfections/wisdom (or lack thereof)/scars/histories/wear&tear/warts&all. And I enjoy knowing that I am enjoying it.
In all my lives, in Nondon and elsewheres, people have often judged me to be younger than I am. But never once had/have I a desire to deny/lie (although some times I evade, because I some times like to see where it leads me when I am perceived to be more naive than I am, which is not to say that I am with out mature folly). The look of shock (or disgust) by the asker invariably provides me with a (perverse) pleasure. (Allow me to share a couple of incidents with you, my Dear Readers. Incident #1: Last week at Cally Pool: Girl asks me when I step into pool, ‘How old are you?’ Me: ‘Make a guess?’ She: ‘19′. I tell her. She looks offended. Keen to restore peace, I ask her: ‘How old are you?’ ‘11′, she replies. She is quite a bit taller than me. She looks me up and down. Then, both unclear of how to carry on with the conversation, we swim off in separate directions, in shock. Incident #2: At my local Tesco’s, when asked for my ID, I tell cashier my age. She stares at me, and gets her Supervisor. The women begin staring at me. ‘Perhaps it is what I’m wearing?’, I offer. ‘No, it’s your skin’, supervisor says. ‘Well luckily you are not looking close enough’. So she comes close, barely inches away from me, eyes wide open, examining me. Keen to get my bottle, I endure this unexpected scrutiny for several seconds. ‘What do you eat to look like this?’, she asks, as the cashier beeps my bottle and Tesco’s-branded cheap and nasty cakes. ‘Tesco’s cheap and nasty cakes,’ I reply. Incident #3: He, 18, guessed that I was 22. I said, ‘We could have met when I first came to Nondon, but we might not have recognised each other as you must have been in a pram (and dozy from all that milky binge-drinking).’ I think this is a hilarious image, but he clearly did not.)*
Mind you, I am by no means old, old, but having lived 6 out of my prescribed 32.8-months allowance declares that I am no spring chicken, but a mature summer barbecued pork, sweating in lard. Dripped from the previous years’ roasts.
This image has as its source several text-tree diagrammes generated by Dr. Jamie O'Brien from a programme he designed.
More than ever before, I now enjoy many things physically, intellectually and psychologically. My Life 3.0 reality is an augmented one, but with neither sillycone nor sentimentalism. The best part is that I enjoy knowing how much I am able to enjoy what I am enjoying. (A sign of smugness perhaps, or an other indication of a profound delusion. Not unike Quixote’s). And this is not a tautological statement (even though we enjoy tautologies and tautologies enjoy us). Though I have always been an introspective person, this seems an other stage of self-awareness and confidence that would have escaped me at an other age. More than ever before, I now know what I want, when I want it, and how to dispense/use/it, at the dosage that works – what specific phrase of a piece of music I wish to listen to, at what volume, for how many number of loops; what particular type of cheese I wish to savour at a particular moment, to be followed by what particular dessert at what dosage; what particular scene of a film I wish to replay in my head, to evoke or force about a particular emotion (and it is invariably a Herzog or Marker or Tarkovsky scene), at what point to wean myself off an obsession, to say ‘Enough!’ and move on; to know the exact demands of a task/race at hand, and pace myself, so that I do not burn out too quickly, so that I stay focused and clear, but allow myself refuelling and treats when the energy levels dip, and then go for a final push, a sprint, a dash, a be-all-end-all exertion, et al. I also enjoy not knowing, and enjoy knowing that I do not know, and enjoy that anticipation, anxiety, excitement, the waiting (Have you read Barthes’ elegant chapter ‘Waiting’, in A Lover’s Discourse?), the feeling silly, and curiosity. I enjoy doing what I am doing. I enjoy what I am being. I enjoy waking up every morning, excited about confronting my challenges. I enjoy a good challenge, as I always have had all my lives, as they give me a good kick, because I enjoy kicking back, hard. I enjoy wanting something and working hard for it. I enjoy achieving. I enjoy leaving. I enjoy arriving. Most of all I enjoy the process of getting there, even if the arrival is anticlimactic. In fact the arrival will invariably be. I enjoy putting in effort. I would have enjoyed not having to put in any effort, of course, but by now I know how I work, how I have to work, so I do, and I enjoy doing that. I enjoy going to bed at night, having fought the demons, windmills, and myselves and looking forward to the next set of challenges the next day. And the next. I enjoy raising the bar (including raising the Snicker bars into my mouth). I enjoy communicating with my friends in Life 2.0. I enjoy knowing you. I enjoy not knowing you. I enjoy that we may never, and/or may never desire to/need to, meet in Life 1.0. I enjoy that we might have met in Life 1.0, but do not out ourselves, because doing so would spoil everything, your idea of Kaidie, and hers, of you. I enjoy that we meet in Life 2.0. I enjoy that we meet at all. I enjoy that we meet, and share, and run together. I enjoy not knowing the fate/s of Kaidie (except that she must expire 09.09.2012). I enjoy that you play a part in Kaidie’s being. I enjoy being invited to unexpected diversions, as invented by my friends, including you, my Dear Readers, my Collaborators, my Co-creators. I enjoy being Kaidie. I enjoy that Kaidie and Life 3.0 are public properties, and open source systems, and our collective and subjective imagination. I enjoy trying and testing new things. I enjoy going where I hadn’t/ wouldn’t have. I enjoy running with you. I enjoy having virtual running companions on my 1000-day journey. I enjoy exploring new territories and unknown terrain. I enjoy not knowing. I enjoy being surprised. I enjoy that things are not written. I enjoy that Kaidie can be over written by you. I enjoy that Kaidie can be written off by you, and me, or in spite of me. I enjoy that Kaidie’s story in Life 3.0 cannot be facilitated with out your Web 2.0 assistance and good-old-fashioned imagination. I enjoy that Kaidie is not precious, that she will cease to exist, that she is me, but can be any one, any body, real or imagined, that she is fictive, but that she is me as well, that I am her, that you can be her too. I enjoy the smell of my cocoa-butter moisturiser because it smells like superrich vanilla icecream and I want to eat it but I don’t. I enjoy lying on the grass with B, G, S when the sun is shining. I enjoy walking home from Great Marlborough Street with C, and sighting a deflated football on the street and attempting to kick it, only to laugh at it, as if to mock it, but affectionately and not maliciously. I enjoy walking home with J & A from Smithfields when it is more than 20 degrees. I enjoy walking home with B from St Johns Street. I enjoy tension. I enjoy prolonging tension. I enjoy saying hello to the Hispanic cleaners. I enjoyed walking with B again, looking for food, starving, then stuffing my face with a sandwich that had hummous, and something else, and asking B if there is anything on my face, but unfortunately left with no more time to talk more. I enjoy taking time. I enjoy the luxury of time. I enjoy having a short attention span. I enjoy having the physical and mental stamina to endure long journeys/races/lives. I enjoy the sting of wasabi. I enjoy walking at 18 degrees. I enjoy running at 8-12 degrees. I enjoy running in the gym at 16 degrees, because that is the lowest you can go, but the air is still stale and stuffy. I enjoy my shower at 40 degrees. I enjoy swimming in chlorine at 25 degrees. I enjoy my foamy coffee piping hot. I enjoy walking along Commercial Road with G. I enjoyed walking with S along the canal late at night, when I slipped, because I was not wearing my glasses, and where I would not have walked alone at that hour, but together it was lovely, based on a decade of friendship. I enjoyed wandering around Moscow with I as it snowed and we got lost in the circle line. I enjoyed exploring Perth with J, 2 foreigners and strangers looking for a place to go, with out a map, enjoying being lost, together. I enjoyed walking in Suomenlinna with P in a Summer midnight, when it was still bright, albeit chilly. I enjoyed being submerged in the outdoor onsen, in the mountains, when it was cold and raining, holding an umbrella, pitch black, seeing no thing, but comforted by my friends’ laughter, friends who had brought me here because I was flying off the next day. I enjoyed walking with F in Spore in my previous life, and Paris in my current, even though we have both moved on. I enjoy all my long distance flights. I enjoy not sleeping on my long distance flights. I enjoy flying across timezones, political excuses and economic selfishness. I enjoyed my 7-hour bus ride with A, with out sleep, and the subsequent croissants for breakfast, during which exactly two thousand bits of pastry were busily flaking onto the dirty trashy subway station ground, so instead of eating all 2 croissants A had only 1.2, or thereabouts, I gathered. I enjoy running, flying, swimming and living alone. I still enjoy swimming because the chlorine endorphins kick in surely and quickly. I enjoyed running in Tokyo, Fukuoka, Beppu, Oxford, Spore and Winterthur. I enjoy getting jealous of Kaidie when B tells me that he might prefer to go out with the Life 2.0, virtual Kaidie than the Life 1.0 me. I enjoy the airconditioning in the British Library and Wellcome Institute. I enjoy sweating when working out. I enjoy being underestimated. I enjoy proving myself. I enjoy proving myself wrong. I enjoy learning. I enjoy perfect pitch and hearing. I enjoy being a little short-sighted, so I see things in a slight blur when too far away. I enjoy fuzzy logic. I enjoy ambiguity. I enjoy dry humour. I enjoyed playing the piano for 11 years. I enjoy imagining an other life as a concert pianist. I enjoy walking in Regents Fark with A, not knowing where we were going, if any where, but even if no where, that was fine, as it was, as it is. I enjoyed the warmth of my filmmaker-activist friends in Sderot who were passionate about peace. I enjoyed their sincerity and kindness after I endured endless searches in order to get onto el al opening my bags emptying my hand luggage removing my battery from my laptop showing them my files body searched many times passports flipped endless questions asked. I enjoy imagining Y running in Hyde Park, although not with me. I enjoy the smell of fresh bread. I enjoy eating at least 1 banana daily. I enjoy salmon and brie. I enjoy champagne with pancakes. I enjoy olives and corn and niceness. I enjoy the smell of B’s hair. I enjoy smells. I enjoy smelling. I enjoy the smell of my coconut shampoo. I enjoyed last Thursday aplenty. I enjoyed Tuesday very much too. I enjoy enjoying the moments of enjoyment when they happen. I enjoy not trying to repeat such moments because of my insatiability. I enjoy training myself to not be nostalgic. I enjoy training myself not to be attached. I enjoy separating mind from matter. I enjoyed saying hello to the many little people at the museum, because they remind me of R, E, K, B, K, S, even though I have not met S and she, and K, and E would not recognise/remember me, that I have to start afresh with them when I next meet them, and I do not know when I will next meet them. I enjoy holding a baby or a toddler. I enjoy not being labelled as selfish for my choices, because I think the choice of reproduction is as selfish. I enjoy i-chatting with R, who knows all its functions by the age of 6. I enjoy silence when I am working. I enjoy working in silence, because I have memorised and mis-memorised how Gould does it and it swims in my head, never mind if it is a distortion of distortions of Beethoven and Bach. I enjoy the ability to be silent when with an other, because it says that we do not need to rubbish talk, even though I enjoy talking rubbish to amuse you, and me, but I enjoy being silent when we are together, because it is in silence that we are in an other space and time that we enclose for us, as and when I desire an enclosure/definition. I enjoy sleeping. I enjoy sleeping for 12 hours for a recharge. I enjoyed watching G’s eyeballs widen because I say rubbish. I always enjoy walking along Farrington Road because it is wide and gently sloped and when I walk there I am in a good mood or walking there puts me in a good mood. I enjoy walking at 6.5kmh when it is sunny. I enjoy wanting. I enjoy running the next morning. I enjoy being cooked for. I enjoy sitting at the back of a motorised bike. I think I will enjoy skydiving, bungee jumping, and deepsea diving. And freefalling. I enjoy doing things with no strings attached. I enjoy sleeping at 2200 and walking up at 0500. I enjoy running at 0700. I enjoy a disciplined life. I enjoy letting go. I enjoy being focused. I enjoy being distracted. I enjoy having a sense of control. I enjoy having my routines interrupted. I enjoy drawing lists of things to do. I enjoy drawing lists to remind me to look at my other lists. I enjoy being disrupted. I enjoy pushing myself physically and mentally as a dare to myself. I enjoy surprises. I enjoy being surprised. I enjoy smiling to fellow runners now, when I shied away from it before, but now I do it some times because it is nice when you do laps and encounter the same characters repeatedly, so you smile, and move on. I enjoy smiling and waving back when I run along Euston Road and school girls from the bus smile and wave at me this morning. I enjoyed the 7-second run the man wearing ‘Save The Children’ bright blue t-shirt did with me as I run past Kings Cross yesterday morning. I enjoy running because it calms me down and rids my anxieties, but when A asks, why are you anxious in the first place, I can not answer. I enjoy hearing my heavy breathing as I run, because it reminds me that I am breathing. I enjoy sweating as I run. I enjoy looking forward to food, drinks and not running, when I am running. I enjoy swinging my arms and propelling myself forward as I run. I enjoy running with the minimal things, without water, without ID, with no money, no baggage, no burden, just run. I enjoy running in a city, in any city, because I am no longer seen as an other, no longer small and exotic, but having some temporary ownership of the place I am running, and personalising the space I inhabit, and I gaze the city in a different manner, and I am gazed upon in a different manner, I am even taken to be a local and am asked for directions. I enjoy doing a little bouncy gait this morning, with out pain, with out aches, with some speed. I enjoy watching the blister grow on my toe. I enjoy the texture of chaffed skin from rubbing my arm against my running shirt. I enjoy my running clothes scratching my back, creating marks on my back that do not leave, where as I would have been disturbed by any mark or blemish or spot before, but now I accept some, because it comes with this activity. I enjoy taking time to warm up. I enjoy taking time to stretch. I enjoy fartleks when I feel stronger. I enjoy pounding on the treadmill when I am fully focused, because I have to be careful not to drift, because when I did I fell off. I enjoy hitting 14kmh on the treadmill. I enjoy counting when on the treadmill. I enjoy not counting because I count everything in my life. I enjoy taking calculated risks. I enjoy slow, long-drawn runs when I work at distances. I enjoy running alone in real life. I enjoy testing my limits. I enjoy knowing my limits. I enjoy pushing my limits. I enjoy working with my limits and limitations. I enjoy the prospect of a big bowl of boiled cauliflower/parsnips/broccoli/cougettes after my run. I enjoy that my cheap pink nail polish comes off nearly as soon as I put them on. I always enjoy my 2nd round in the Fark because that is when I am no longer anxious, but simply running, when my head is full of thoughts, and at the same time not thinking of any thing in particular, when my body is most relaxed, and when my GPS will register my faster times, not because I am racing, but because it feels good, and I know now how to make myself feel good by calling upon my running endorphins. I enjoyed a very nice run on Wednesday morning, after a nice Tuesday where no thing and every thing and some thing else happened, when I moved on the next morning, still tired and still light, but running, unthinkingly, and registered my most enjoyable and fastest 2nd round ever in a non-race condition, 10.2kmh, as opposed to my usual 9.4kmh, not terribly much better in real terms, but mentally, in unreal terms, trust me, it felt good, very good, feeling completely free from any pain, any bother, just relaxed, just 1 foot after the other, not minding the branches poking me, not minding other runners zapping past me, but bouncing on/off my shoes, not as if my shoes are super bouncy, for, mind you, it was my old Brooks, 1 out of my 3 pairs of running shoes, but this with the sole /soul soon coming off, but still I felt a bounce, a new gait that I never had before Wednesday, and best of all, I was able to control that and bring it on when I felt ready, and I knew that I felt ready, so I ran, almost bouncing sideways, arms swaying me forward, not minding how funny or ugly or clumsy I must have appeared, but enjoying the lightness of being, momentarily, in perfect control, and complete-total-freaking-fully let go at the same time. I enjoy discipline. I enjoy being a disciplinarian. I enjoy the dictum of no pain no gain. I enjoy Nondon and cannot imagine doing this, whatever it is that I am doing, any where else. I enjoy long distance calls on Skype. I enjoy running across different dimensions. I enjoy being confused about which dimension I am in, and applying different sets of values, sometimes inappropriately. I enjoy forgetting if I should have been more assertive, or am not humble/polite/modest enough, or am too much of a go-getter. I enjoy forgetting if I am not serious enough, if I am too austere, or if I am too childish. I enjoy having a large repertoire of values to pick and mix, and learning new things in each new dimension that I travel to. I enjoy my life and lives now and do not stop me from enjoying myself. I enjoy this intensity, this being filled, this being fulfilled, being empty, a half full/half empty question, being anxious, being lucid, being heightened, having no excessive things in my life, being frivolous and enjoying silly indulgences. I enjoy being reconciled. I also enjoy not being reconciled, being confused, being consistently inconsistent, being torn between violent opposing thoughts, still struggling with the theory vs. practice problem, being exhausted and wrecked by Kaidie, being Kaidie, not being Kaidie, being besides myself, being shipwrecked, being afloat, not moving my arms or legs until the next swimmer comes along and hits me off the lane, tumbling, falling down, stepping on horse poo, huffing and puffing and neighing as I run, running out of breath, holding my breath underwater, being at one and at the same time many, having many conflicting values, and having many contradictory views, having absolutely no values. I will enjoy my Summer. I enjoy staying focused. I will enjoy the next 26.8 months of my life.
* 13 July 2010: After this post was published, I read of a nice story that captures perfectly the essence of the word serendipity- of a couple who lived in seperate continents, but who were photographed 30 years earlier, in the same picture, but one of them in a pram, in the background, and a complete stranger, of course. They met 15 years ago, and only made the discovery 8 years ago just before their wedding. This sounds like a classic Kaidie scenario (of some hits and plenty of misses that we have with one another, as we traverse across lifetimes) albeit one that has a happy ending (in so far as a unification is read as a positive thing, and if endings are desirable).
WHAT DOES TIME MEAN FOR SOMEONE WHO EXISTS ONLY FOR 1000 DAYS? Urbantick interviews Kaidie.
Urbantick: How does time pass in relation to your life of 1000 days?
3rdlifekaidie: Kaidie is alive from 12.12.2009 to the last day of the London Olympics, 09.09.2012. (Do note that the dates form a pseudo-pallindrome of sorts!) As we speak, Kaidie is already 150 days-old, and has only 850 days or 216,000 minutes left. Having a clear knowledge of one’s duration Kaidie’s existence all the more intense and augmented. It is in living a death sentence that one is compelled to question what one’s priorities in life is. It is an extremely positive and focused experience, as Kaidie lives every minute to the fullest. Being a runner only accentuates this. Running echoes the speed at which technology is changing today. This technological rush and running both make Kaidie run out of breath. That said, she is not a sprinter. Hardly…
Urbantick: Your life is constrained to 1000 days. How does 1000 days feel? The limitation probably is even more obvious compared to something that lasts longer. What do you measure the passage of your life against? You are talking about living life to the limit, experienceing it intense and running. Is there a slow and a fast time?
3rdlifekaidie: 1000 days is both tortuosly long and terribly short. What could be accomplished in 1000 days? For Kaidie, she has to find the Meaning of Life 3.0 (with)in/before time runs out. Is 1000 days long enough for that? Or is it too thinned out? Traveling around the world in 80 days seem like a ride of a lifetime; 800 or 8000 days is still not feel sufficient for one to heal the wound of a dead memory; 1 day is 1 too many to go cold turkey on an addiction/obsession/obscure object of desire; every minute of every single day is a new discovery, a new beginning for a baby. Running 42km for 5 hours seems a little preposterous; ‘hanging out’ with a loved one for the same duration seems too short, as one always yearns (futilely) to ’spend the rest of one’s life’ with an other. Kaidie rejects any notion of eternity and permanence (if there is one thing that is remotely ‘forever’, it is the notion of changeableness). Instead, Kaidie plunges into the moment of the now/here, and lives like all tommorow’s parties (and funerals) are right now.
As Kaidie traverses between the real and virtual worlds, she measures her time against the calender in real life. Taking the cue from one of her favourite performance artists Teh-Ching Hsieh and his 1-year performances, Kaidie cannot cut her hair for 1000 days. Well, most of her hair. It would be rather unbecoming to appear excessively Neanderthal, would it not.
Urbantick: Is it important to be on time? Looking back, how have you come to this position and what is your background? What is you strongest time experience?
3rdlifekaidie: Of course it is important to be on time – especially given that Kaidie has such a short lifespan of all of 1000 days only. Not to add that it is incredibly rude to keep someone else waiting – unless one intends to offend the other party, in which case it works rather well. One of Kaidie’s stronger time experiences so far was when she took part in the 10km charity run for the Friends of Medecins Sans Frontieres. She split up the workload with her Facebook friend, Kailives, and managed to complete the race in half her usual time. Another instance was when she was advised by her reader to ‘look for love’ in her Life 3.0. Being so short of time, she went on a speeddating session. However, she found nothing. Maybe such things need more time? Perhaps she will learn in time to come.
Urbantick: The clock time is everywhere on planet earth different, how would you describe the current time of the planet globally? In a rather global sense, how would you define time?
3rdlifekaidie: Time is process, journey, running, goes on, does not stop, goes on in spite of, change, memory, experience, imagination, fantasy, learning, not learning, wounds, healing, not healing, life goes on, in spite of.
Urbantick: I always presumed the virtual world to be a replication of the real world. You are spending a lot of time in the virtual world. Can you explain what the terms ’space and ‘time’ mean in life 2.0? Are you using a specific definition of time in each of the worlds, and if so how do you translate it?
3rdlifekaidie: Where Kaidie is, in Life 3.0. Life 3.0 is the tactic of the dérive in the ma (in between) of Life 1.0 and Life 2.0. It occurs in a dimension in which space and time are ‘mutually responsive’, in a ‘chaotic, mixed condition’.
Typical of cultures that view life as cyclical and temporal, ma appears to be imprecise according to Western paradigms, adhering to the exasperating ‘oriental’ logic of ‘contradiction’.[ii] Ma, which refers to ‘an “interval” between two (or more) spatial or temporal things and events,[iii] departs from the Cartesian expression of space-time as a ‘homogeneous and infinite continuum’. That ma encapsulates in its meaning the notions of both time and space can be seen in compound terms such as time (jikan), and space (kuukan). Instead of being ‘abstracted as a regulated, homogenous flow’, time was believed to exist ‘only in relation to movements or spaces’[iv] in Japan. Noh actor Komparu Kunio admits the ambiguity and power alike of the single term ma:
Because it includes three meanings, time, space, and space-time, the word ma at first seems vague, but it is the multiplicity of meanings and at the same time the conciseness of the single word that makes ma a unique conceptual term, one without parallel in other languages.[v]
Cyberspace, one of the components of Life 2.0 in the discussion, is itself an unstable and still-untamed site. The ‘nonspace of the mind’ [vi] is a site of ‘consensual hallucination’. [vii] It is also ‘the ether that lies inside and occupies the in-betweens of all the computers’[viii]. Superimposing the notion of dérive to that of ma as ‘space between’ [ix], ‘time between’[x] and space-time-between[xi] Life 1.0 and Life 2.0, Life 3.0 is the restless travelling in between space, travelling in between time, as well as travelling in between the space and time between space and time.
Urbantick: At work you run, well you are running all the time, how do you relate to time while you run? Is there a backup system if the timing fails?
3rdlifekaidie: Rather than a static condition, Life 3.0 is a verb of action, of restless running in between Life 1.0 (physical reality) and Life 2.0 (realm of imagination, and Web 2.0). Kaidie runs, albeit slowly, as her race is a marathon of her life journey. Any marathon is a test of one’s physical as well as mental stamina. In any long-distance run, there are ups and downs. Kaidie gets her fair share of ‘runner’s highs’. When this happens, time (and space) are not of any consequence. However, when Kaidie hits the walls, or runs with blisters and aches, time slows down, or even comes to a standstill. In times like these, there is nothing Kaidie can do except to plough through, run through the problem and face it head on, conquer it, learn from it, and then move on. And on.
This interview was conducted by UrbanTick/Fabian Neuhaus on email with Kaidie. It was first published on UrbanTick’s blog on 19 May 2010. In UrbanTick’s words: “In this interview series UrbanTick is looking closely at meaning and implications of time in everyday life situations. In the form of dialogs different aspects are explored, with the idea to highlight characteristics. The main interest is circling around the construction and implementation of different concepts of time between independent but related areas of activity, such as leisure and work, privat and public, reality and virtual.”
Fabian Neuhaus is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. His main research interests are temporal aspects of the urban environment and cyclical, repetitive temporal patterns specifically. He has been teaching at the University of Plymouth as well as the Bartlett School of Architecture. For his MSc in urban design at the Bartlett School of Architecture he was awarded a distinction. Fabian also received a MArch from FHNW Basel, Switzerland. He has worked with architecture and urban design practices, and universities, in Switzerland, Germany and the UK.
[i] Isozaki, Arata, and Ken Tadashi Oshima, Arata Isozaki (Phaidon Press, 2009), p. 157.
[ii]Daniel Charles, ‘Bringing The Ryoan-Ji To The Screen’, Taka Iimura homepage <http://www.takaiimura.com/review/DC.html>, accessed 21 November 2009.
[iii] Pilgrim, Richard B., ‘Intervals (“Ma”) in Space and Time: Foundations for a Religio-Aesthetic Paradigm in Japan.’ History of Religions 25, no. 3, February 1986, p. 255.
[iv] Isozaki and Oshima, 157.
[v] Isozaki and Oshima, p. 158
[vi] William Gibson, Neuromancer, new edition, Voyager, 1995.
[vii] Gibson.
[viii] Sardar Z. & Ravetz J.R., 1995. From Martin Dodge, ‘Cybergeography’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 28(1) 1-2, 2001 <http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b2801ed>, accessed 4 January 2010.
[ix] Pilgrim, p. 255.
[x] Pilgrim, p. 255.
[xi] Isozaki and Oshima, p. 158
THE INVISIBLE (LAYERS OF THE) CITY: KAIDIE’S ROUGH GUIDE TO THE EXOTIC FAR EAST #3.
Erratum: ‘I was confident that I could …’ on the left hand corner here at the bottom should read ‘I was confident that I could outrun this person/any one, not because I run fast (Dear Readers, we have been there before, several times), but because I knew that if I kept going, stubbornly, silli-ly, I would, eventually. So I did.’ This sentence should alternatively say, ‘I was confident that I would not run ahead of my bloody sentences and would finish them the next time before I publish anything’. There you/I go.
DOCUMENTATION OF 3.0, 2.0, 1.0! READY, GET SET, GO! RUN FOR (Y)OUR LIVES! 22 March 2010 performance.
8 minute lecture-performance by Kailives, standing in for Kaidie, on the eve of Kaidie’s 100th day birthday and her continued dis-location. Kailives discusses the philosophy of Life 3.0, and the gap between theory (of Life 3.0) and (Kaidie’s) practice (of her semblance of life). Unbeknownst to Kailives, however, towards the end of the performance, Kaidie makes a brief appearance – right behind Kailives back, on screen!
The performance was filmed by the wonderful performance artist/filmmaker Jayne Parker. Off The Shelf, a 1-night word-image event, was curated by Sharon Morris and Jon Thomson, at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK, 22 March 2010, Monday. Kaidie’s segment came on at around 2130hrs.
**There was a gap in documentation towards the end of the performance due to tape change**
** There will be an upcoming gig at the end of June in the city of Nondon! For updates, watch this space! For gigs that Kaidie has performed so far, watch that space! **
