The International: A Prelude

I have been a fan of the Carnegie International since 2005, when I first encountered the 40+ exhibits during a writing class. With my student ID in hand, I went back every chance I got, sometimes studying difficult paintings, trying to find meaning that was, to me, furtive, and sometimes sitting in the octagonal room filled with 8 projectors, each showing slightly differing clips of a man and a woman wandering the streets of an abandoned Paris train station while Philip Glass scores seemingly colored the black and white film.

I have eagerly anticipated this newest International. I had the opening marked in my date book and have been salivating at the chance to go. I finally went today, with my father and boyfriend.

It is fantastic. I am startled by how this International is simultaneously so similar and so different from the last one. It is, as was the previous one, ruthlessly fulfilling for any visual aesthete. This new one is both less provoking and more in-your-face. I'm wondering if the provocation will come with a second, third, etc., visit.

The first piece I encountered, an interactive wishing exhibit, set the mood for the visit perfectly. The wall is covered with ribbons of different colors. On each ribbon a wish is printed (some in German, some in Spanish, some in French, some in English). You remove the ribbon with the wish you want, or like, and tie it to your wrist with three knots. As you make each knot, you wish. Then you take a little piece of paper from a table nearby and write a wish of your own, which you slide into a hole in the wall. The artist collects the written wishes and prints them on new ribbons. I am wearing another person's wish, and someone else will wear mine. When this ribbon breaks, or falls off of my wrist, the wishes will come true.

I imagine that the artist prints multiple copies of some of her favorites because a few messages were peppered frequently among the others:

I wish for no more political crimes in Lebanon.

I wish to win the lotto.

I wish a vacation en la playa.

I wish I could have chosen my religion.

Je désire mourir en dormant. ( Translation: I wish to die sleeping.)

When I read the last one aloud, and then translated for my boyfriend and dad, a woman standing near me looked up and said "that's a good one, I should have taken that one."


I took the ribbon that said "I wish to always be overwhelmed by love."

In the spirit of this blog, which is really just the spirit of myself, I left one that said "I wish love for you all."

And I do.