In the Presence of Absence

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In Simon Van Booy’s extraordinary novel, The Presence of Absence, each well-wrought sentence builds upon the next, taking us deeper into Max Little’s life with staggering lucidity. The first part of the story is constructed in descending numerical chapters that decline with a sense of fatalism as the narrator reconstructs his life’s highpoints interspersed with uncanny, existential observations on the business of life, death, and dying. Max confesses his mind’s innerworkings with adroit ease. “Do people ever walk around their homes, wondering which room they will die in? Whether it will be a Wednesday night or Saturday morning at the table with toast and coffee?” And “What would happen to things like knives and forks once I was gone. Would my wife keep them?” Book Genre: 21st Century, Classics, Literary Fiction, Literature, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Poetry Plays A] unique achievement… It offers costly wisdoms from a life journey, rendered in the opaque lyricism of Darwish’s poetry…His is the voice of dispossessed Palestine but its longings, including sheer lust, are universal. This book overflows with resonant lines and questions… It is a book for life. —The Independent Tras una juventud dentro de la Palestina ocupada, años salpicados por numerosos arestos, se trasladó a Egipto y después al Líbano para realizar su sueño de renovación poética. Será en su exilio en Paris, tras tener que abandonar forzosamente el Líbano, donde logre su madurez poético y logre un reconocimiento ante los ojos occidentales. When recalled by words, those moments are impervious to the attempt to raise the body to the station of the soul. Who among us has not said to his woman: “I only exist in you,” and was truthful. We were truthful, as well, when we found our existence in a similar utterance in a different place. So do you know how to love? You cannot answer, perhaps because you did not notice the subtle atmospheric shifts when traveling from pole to pole: love and passion, rapture and infatuation, ardor and affection, fondness and devotion, blazing love and bewildering love, craving and caprice, dalliance and desire, longing and lust, admiration and attraction, and other desires in search of senses. In every station the body has a certain state, and for every state there is a station between death and life. So you never know where or how you are.

But no one makes a peak his abode. You both slip together from the highest heaven into a dewy drowsiness. You both whisper in the shared silence and say nothing, but it is more lucid than anything. You dream together, and separately, that this embrace might last forever, until you realize that “forever” has a very short life span, and that eternity does not heed anyone. It often circulates and shifts from one minute to another and from one state to another.

a b c d "Interview with Zak Rizvi and Tom Brislin of Kansas - The Absence of Presence". May 19, 2020. Installation view In the Presence of Absence. Proposals for the museum collection. Leonardiansyah Allenda, Chapter 6: Marni, 2020. Photo Peter Tijhuis.

I think about death often. If I die tomorrow, I will be alive still. This version of me at least, the one writing this in the present that will soon, in a matter of seconds, become the past. That person (myself) will live there, here.In conjunction with the exhibition In the Presence of Absence, several of the participating artists discuss various themes related to the exhibition in three online talkshow. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that isolation is a side effect of depression or su*cidal ideation. Isolation is an injurious thing. After all, what is not being known if not just another form of not existing at all? In addition to referring to itself, Little's text also refers to such literary figures as Shakespeare and Ibsen, as well as such pop culture artifacts as "The A-Team" and "Knight Rider," as he reflects on both his literary career and his childhood. Britte Sloothaak & Fadwa Naamna (on behalf of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), Cédric Fauq (curator and writer, Palais de Tokyo), Monika Szewczyk (director De Appel, Amsterdam), Prem Krishnamurthy (designer, curator, writer, Wrkshps and (co-) artistic director FRONT International 2021) and Zippora Elders (artistic director Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen and co-curator sonsbeek21-24) Would you like to visit In the Presence of Absence? Follow the routes that have been marked out in the museum. The galleries are large enough for you to move about freely. Please stay 6 feet away from other visitors in the exhibition spaces and follow the instructions of museum staff and volunteers when given