So you’re on the way to the moon, right. It’s a big sphere, fabulous, covered in round craters, perfect. We’re going to build something on it, and it should be something identifiable, something kids can draw. I know I could draw the basic concept of the Eiffel Tower and… I’m imagining what this thing looks like in elevation, but really I want to keep thinking about things in plan, from above, FROM SPACE. The people of Dubai got it, almost. They knew about making their mark on Earth.

The Pentagon, a pentagon; The Pyramids, pyramidal; the old Apple Headquarters (oh it’s not the present day because in the present day you would not seriously consider a role in space exploration); a circle, don’t know enough about ancient american rock drawings, humanoid. Stadiums are ellipsoid variations… ok stadiums should be perfect but are odd now because our sports fields (baseball) are such weird shapes and otherwise clear forms have to contort around them. The Coliseum in Rome was perfect and the SUPERDOME in New Orleans is still one of the best examples on earth of a space-scale symbol-building. Baha’i temples are all nonagons.

Spiral Jetty, Tree Mountain, Double Negative.
Spaceship Earth, The Atomium, The St. Louis Arch,
Mines, Wells, Reservoirs,
Agriculture, Auroville, and Crop Circles,
what are those
Foundations, Piers, Pylons, Power Plants,
Landfills, Dams,
and
Canals, Dikes, Walls, Roads, Bridges, Tracks,
Tunnels, Pipelines, Powerlines, these aren’t…
…these are all just lines. We’ve built great lines.

Sometimes when you’re in nature, especially the beach, where you’re given an endless supply of material, at your fingertips, you start playing. Little circles with your finger. Arrange 4 shells in a square. Catalogue 12 stones in 3 rows of 4 in descending order of size.

Like zoom in to the structures of coral, and find fractals in ferns and Fibonacci sequences in sunflowers. Mollusks build 1.618 spiral shells that last well beyond their deaths.

Footprints in the snow
Make that mark
Shovel that path dude
So we all can walk

Hottest year in history
Best plan your ruin
That unnatural monument
There’s a storm a brewin’

On Earth there are wetlands and salt flats and the oceans so just build an island. Or just ignore the Earth, the setting doesn’t matter, only the shape matters. The Earth will blow away so the shape takes form to support itself. The form will last forever, is alone in space and h-as no direction. If it is perfect it can be any size. You know, the atom as the universe.

I’m in space and I see more spheres and I cannot compete with spheres. Big Panorama of Space. I put my thumbs and forefingers in the shape of a rectangle 6 inches in front of my face, creating a viewfinder. I need a frame for this. I make nice compositions of stars, seemingly always presentable, perfectly random, with infinite asymmetrical balance. I start imagining straight lines connecting the brightest stars: there are wonky rhombuses, a kinda OK hexagon, a pretty good hourglass/bowtie that I made from connecting 2 triangles, with the brightest star in sight at the center. I focus on the purest rhombus, a lozenge, like a squished diamond, where the sides and angles are pretty equal. It’s over to the left. I imagine this line drawing filled with white, set off against the black of space. I spin The lozenge on its long axis and it makes this nice form, I’m sure it has a name. I put down my hands and memorize this form. I practice looking away and then quickly jerking back to the left, and after 10 minutes I can find The Form without having to look for it or refocus.

Further by David Salkin

Further by David Salkin
EDMUND CHIA (Singapore, b. 1977) lives and works in Singapore. He received an MFA from SAIC in Painting and Drawing in 2009. His work has been exhibited at Feature Inc., Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Julius Caesar, ICA Singapore and Aspect Ratio Gallery. He is the founder of PEREGRINPROGRAM and continues to practice as an Artist, Educator and Curator.

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