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In all the arts, there are those moments that are as though somebody has made the gesture of raising a palm, which is not a stop sign, but a — ”Attend, hush, listen.”
I think those are the moments we really live for in art, the moment where the artfulness falls away, and all that is left is that thing we don’t have a better word for beyond poetry.
I adore the writer and photographer Teju Cole. The way he talks about art could be applied to gatherings (because connection is art, too). I live for the moments where the logistics, identities, themes, and even the content fade away to leave nothing but the beauty of connection, nothing but...poetry.
I'm thinking about the power of connection as I'm reading Roland Barthes' final book, Camera Lucida, in which he gives a stunning reflection on photography. Barthes talks about how a photograph can create a sense of adventure in the viewer, an animation. For him, this happens through two elements: the studium and the punctum.
The studium, is a what the scene is made of, the visual components that create the broader setting, the context. The punctum is what stands out for the viewer, what is moving. The punctum breaks the studium. "It rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow and pierces me", Barthes says.
A photograph's punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).
What is interesting is that the punctum is often a detail and thus something noticed subjectively. What moves me might not speak to you at all, and vice versa. This is why, the punctum has a power of expansion. It might be a detail, but for the viewer, it becomes the whole image.
When we think about how we design even the most ordinary of gatherings, it becomes interesting to think about what moment can be punctums, portals of meaning through which we can deeply move, and thus transform, each other.
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