University of Nebraska-Lincoln East Campus

Feeling grumpy like an unhuggable teddy bear after waking up from a dreamless cold winter night was a little bit of déjà vu these days due to my neonatal love for Béla Tarr’s black-and-white film Sátántangó. I needily sipped my espresso cortado and put on Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants album, gradually allowing the warm musical thoughts sunbathing every drop and crumb of my being. Phew.

With Mozart and the Whale, featuring Radha Mitchell and Josh Hartnett as a couple with Asperger syndrome, quietly playing in my antiqued CRT television set, I set myself to archive photos taken in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus. A day with plenty of sunshine, below-zero icy temperature, two layers of jeans, three layers of sweaters, and five layers of big socks, I recalled.

No Comments / Jan 18.10 / Photo, Travel / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Old Market District & Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

Buttering this morning of subdued light and sound with Yōjirō Takita’s film Okuribito and one cup of double-shot espresso, perfected with reddish-brown crema, was a glee in my minimalistic day. Masahiro Motoki and Tsutomu Yamazaki’s performances, deliciously sandwiched with Joe Hisaishi’s film music, brewed a tissue of glutinous emotions tailing me all the way to the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in the Old Market District in Omaha.

The nimble atmosphere of the gallery opening in Bemis oddly counterpointed with frozenly muted streets in the Old Market District. I strolled through the Old Market Passage with composure to avoid direct confrontations with this astonishingly unmusical wintery weather. Suddenly, the encoffinment scenes from Okuribito started to sing, like a soundless stream, thwarting and heartening minutes and seconds of my life.

No Comments / Jan 18.10 / Photo, Travel / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Reflect VIII

Unhurriedly editing graphics made possible with Joshua Davis’ dazzling generative playground in this icily sluggish afternoon felt like having a tea party inside a warm Eskimos Igloo in the North Pole. Fluffy feeling aside, the task was 98% tedious with occasional glitchly rambles from my laptop of old age, seemingly complaining about the heavy data processing. Fair enough. I tucked my laptop into bed, brewed myself a cup of café au lait, and followed Charlyne around in Nicholas Jasenovec’s movie Paper Heart, written by Jasenovec and Charlyne Yi, for 88 fun minutes. A yum movie, I’d say.

No Comments / Dec 20.09 / Graphics / by Jen-Kuang Chang

Fluc.tu.a.tion

Warming up with Canadian composer André Gagnon’s 1983 album “Impressions” and a robust cup of Antoccino in this overcast Saturday morning has unexpectedly twirled into a rather onerous process. Frozen shadows of my life lingered on like wretched souls composed over Gagnon’s placid Comme au premier jour, yearning for affections of any kind. Sigh. I quietly observed my trembling being inaudibly let go exhalations of despondency, as if unbiasedly reviewing someone else’s inconsequential life application, while archiving Fluc.tu.a.tion with an emotional damper over my soundless mind.

No Comments / Dec 19.09 / Graphics / by Jen-Kuang Chang

The Watchful Citizen & Haymarket

Murky snowy day. 2:13 P.M. Alternate between dried cranberries, café noir, Ferrero Rondnoir Dark Chocolate, Moving Pictures: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Guggenheim Museum Collection, and archiving sunny-happy-smiley photos taken in a sunny-happy-smiley November day in the Haymarket with the Watchful Citizen. Old memories like wide-eyed homeless kittens hungerily waiting right outside the door. Meow.

The Watchful Citizen sculpture by Elizabeth Stanley Wallace is located on the corner of 7th and P St. in the Historic Haymarket district in Lincoln, Nebraska. The title of the sculpture is linked to an inscription, “The Salvation of the State is the Watchfulness of the Citizen,” over the main entrance of the Nebraska State Capitol Building.

No Comments / Dec 17.09 / Art, Travel / by Jen-Kuang Chang