Cloudbusting (Rain Poems) 耕云（雨诗） (2024)

Cloudbusting (Rain Poems) (2024)

rainwaters, water-transfer printing papers (tattoo papers), ink, and paper

In Cloudbusting (Rain Poems), the writings of Peter Reich memorializing his deceased father and their shared memories of cloudbusting (making rain) in his childhood were printed on water transfer paper and left outside to be affected by raindrops. The words that remained visible—selected by the raindrops in their pressure and rhythms—are perceived as the rain’s poetry and a means to connect.

This work explores how mourning persists in the natural and constructed environments around us, and how to perceive physically distant things. The rain’s traces become a dual medium: one that mediates between us and the clouds, and another that connects us to the people we lost (medium as a spiritualist who can communicate with the dead.) These traces suggest the desire to reconnect with our loved ones and how we might experience this desire in the environment through transference, dissociation, or interpretation, making elements in the environment conduits for connection. The asemic quality of the “poems” serves only to show us that the attempt to connect is futile; they reflect the absurdity and melancholy one might experience in trying, and the beauty in still trying despite the futility—a failure of language, an absence of meanings, and a longing for miracles.

耕云（雨诗）（2024）

雨水，水转印纸（纹身纸），墨水，纸

在《耕云（雨诗）》中，彼得·莱希（Peter Reich）为纪念已故父亲以及他们共同耕云（制造雨水）的童年回忆而写下的文字，被印刷在水转印纸上并放在户外以受到雨滴的影响。雨滴以其压力和节奏选择性地保留下来的文字，被视为雨的诗歌，以及一种连接的方式。

这件作品探索了哀悼如何在我们周围的自然和人造环境中持续存在，以及如何感知物理上遥远的事物。雨的痕迹成为了一种双重媒介：一种介于我们与云层之间的媒介，另一种则是连接我们与我们所失去的人的媒介（在英文中medium也指灵媒）。这些痕迹表达了我们想要与我们失去的人重新连接的愿望，我们可能通过移情、解离等等在环境中体验到这种渴望，使得环境中的元素成为连接的渠道。这些“诗”的非语意特性只是向我们展示这种对连接的尝试是徒劳的；它们反映了人们在尝试中可能经历的荒谬和忧郁，以及尽管徒劳仍坚持尝试的美丽——一种语言的失败，一种意义的缺席，一种对奇迹的渴望。