Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The discrete time dimension security - Moscow, Russia

The Moscow metro
Last week I was watching a video at a contemporary art exhibition at the Moscow Manege. According to what the author claims as soon as the users of the huge city subway system set foot on the long escalators they suddenly enter a different dimension, where time ceases to be a continuum entity and becomes a sequence of discrete quantities: those of the intervals between two consecutive stops and those of the long waits at the exit gates. The only thing we can do to regain possession of our personal time experience - we read on the exhibit caption - is leaving the flock, walk in the opposite direction, do something unusual, different, original. 
Maybe. It seems to me though that the plastic masses of people that clog the bottlenecks of the escalators mouths - not discrete at all, actually rather continuous, uniform, almost liquid - can be a useful source of security, confidence, physical and human warmth, especially when you are wedged between the soft paunch of a boozer and the prominent ass of a beautiful Moscow girl
Then you recall that a few years back a group of fanatics launched a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, causing a massacre, and you realize that in cases like this the larger the mass the higher the number of victims, so you tend to agree with the artist, not really to reset the hands of your personal clock but rather to save your precious ass. 
Still, dropping the nipple of that huge, sensual and wobbling - albeit time-upsetting - breast is not easy at all.