Godspeed You Black emperor

Has the mass ended? No, brother, it has not ended. Has the mass ended? No, brother, it has not ended. Then the world can still wait for us to come and save it. Godspeed You Black Emperor, my modest contribution to the exhibition you are visiting today will be summed up by this comma that I point out at the end of its initial gesture. Here, we are witnessing a unique play in which the objects staged have agreed to be found, gathered, and brought together, in honor of yet another act. For from their conception in workshops and factories to be located somewhere in the provinces of Guangdong or Shandong — through their display in hubs bathed in gelatinous light and pop music that deprive us of any intimate refuge — and let us not forget their delivery, carried out at a hellish pace by exhausted young men, paid between 15 and 20 an hour through precarious contracts that can be transferred or terminated at any moment — we must count all the way to the fifth activation of these objects, after they have been displayed directly on the floor of our immense urban grey cube, before our brother joins the great cycle of this traveling exhibition, crisscrossing a world from bottom to top, a world whose flow he attempts to interrupt, as a gradual way of calling it into question. Godspeed You Black Emperor You choreograph You scenographer Big playa!a Grand magician, you summon forth what resides beneath matter; you recognize, at the heart of things, what exists in potential, only to transfigure it into act. Humble black herald¹, you readily admit that you do not know in advance what will come to pass, and yet there it is: knowledge accumulates in a gaze shaped by attention to the world. And it is a craft that calls to be honed, carved with a mallet from the multitude of possibilities encoded in space. “We know without knowing, because there is nothing to know. Everything is already in Everything.” Yes, everything is already there, in the recollection of a mother’s hands covering furniture with marbled wallpaper, in the hypnotic riddim of a Chicago mixtape, beneath the majestic wings of the Angel Djibril. To capture this light, you will have to cut through the apparent opacity of the sculptures by accepting their invitation onto the playing field. This corner of the world is a “dream body”², a child’s bedroom transformed through a revisiting of its own memories. The cupboards, the bed, the sweet jars shelter the deep intimacy and enigma of the present moment. One piece of advice: make sense of the space by starting from your own space. Our brother describes his as submarines whose radars scan clues and talismans, bringing forth, through encounter, a shared truth. PAW! Hit, sunk! Welcome to the board of the great game. Players! Women players! Greatly curious ones and those who remain impervious are just as necessary as one another; let us open our eyes wide. Godspeed You Black Emperor³, The daily trumpets announce the renewal of the cycle of ending and beginning. Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé! / Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos, / la resaca de todo lo sufrido / se empozara en el alma… ¡Yo no sé!.b Gathered within these walls — white with professions — your works wander among ghosts and prospectives. Old and new worlds blur together in the sum of objects you divert from their so-called initial functions, assigning them instead to what everything is supposedly meant to serve. For there was a time when every community of human beings had the right, in their everyday lives, to be surrounded by beautiful objects. Everyone is free to devise their own definition of the word “beautiful”; I choose: interesting, that which arouses interest, draws attention, and provides an advantage. Son pocos, pero son… Abren zanjas oscuras / en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte. / Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas; / o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.c The past is a future time. It will return. Shall we once again deny that we are nothing more than vectors through which time and space express themselves? Black herald, beware of the whispers that assign to you the message you carry ! As before, fetishes were emptied of their powers by colonial missions; the herald’s gesture contributes to the revitalization of objects confined to their physical expression, gradually freeing them from our way of categorizing them. And looking more closely, this gesture belongs to the continuation of a movement that precedes it, and which the herald escorts to us. This is why we choose to see our brother as the one who has been chosen to carry the message for a time. But beware: this election comes with a certain responsibility. From that point on, the difficulty will lie less in the arduousness of the road ahead than in the was-was that will attribute all the relevance of the message to its messenger. Beware: it is a hook. The vision bestowed speaks just as much to the one who receives it. And the fisherman has good taste! And if we cannot resolve the dilemma we share with you, then two things: the courage to keep rubbing up against it, and the courage to find rest and joy between the watches. So, has the mass ended ? — No, brother, it has not ended, but the potion is ready. And those who taste it will dance to the mad rhythms of the eternal universe until time is abolished.