Notes from going underground

Across the silk-covered room, the fairy tale begins swiftly, a flowing iridescent current. A failed thought pauses in distraction and then floats harmlessly by.

Somehow before it fades, an Asian police officer wearing a green gray uniform urges a speedy retreat from the scene of the crime yet to happen. An unavoidable anticipation pervades and hangs thicker than fog as I follow. The trap is being baited though to what extent remains very uncertain as a frightful deja vu lurks from behind the shadow of a wooden door left ajar. Through it lies our sole means of escape, some think, salvation. But from what or whom? No one directly says, however.

And we move fast through the door and descend an impossibly linear spiral staircase, three steps at a time in a blur. Seen from above, it is a dizzying funnel of steps headed to a central vanishing point. The tessellated perspective distorts any sense of reality, elongating our legs in slow motion until frozen in Futurist space as if a rare Marcel Duchamp canvas. The hunter becomes the hunted, lost in the rabbit hole. Trin T. Minh Ha whispers from the balcony above, something mouthed disguised as words. Who do we run from now? Are they immediately behind us?

Upstairs a clear light shines through the gauze window curtain but from the inside outward, a luminous air permeating thin skins. A mysterious figure is about to appear. The silent cinematographer moves aside, his 35mm camera rolling and shoots from a wide angle, unnoticed.

She calls out without reply.