Liminal Experience

<p>In one of his writings, Los Angeles artist Allan Sekula (1951–2013) mentions the wind in relation to maritime transportation. For him, straight-line navigation allowed by new technology of the steam engine first, and later the diesel one, won over the zigzags demanded by the wind. The natural phenomenon was tamed by technology, an occurrence that coincidentally comes back as “wind-straightener” in Haseeb Ahmed’s wind tunnel at Rib in Rotterdam, yet for different purposes.</p> <p>This fifth issue of <em>Taming the Horror Vacui</em> publication deals with how an artistic practice can unfold another. It originates from a lecture by art historian Anja Isabel Schneider, who, following a two-year-long collaboration with Haseeb Ahmed, picks up a few elements from the work of Allan Sekula to provide further readings of Ahmed’s work and vice versa. A void is filled when another is created.</p> <p>The title of Schneider’s lecture <em>Swell</em> (from the German word <em>schwellen</em>) references Walter Benjamin’s definition of a threshold (<em>Schwelle</em>), significant to articulating space and time present in the way both Sekula thinks of the port and Ahmed the wind tunnel. Moreover, Schneider links Sekula’s “staging (of) the wind” to Haseeb Ahmed’s ongoing wind tunnel experiment at Rib, which was used for a test involving an unplugged vintage fan of the type used by Sekula in multiple occasions, set in motion merely by the largest fan of the testing machine…</p>