To carry earlier moments within you,
to use these as fuel to dream
of the future as well as the past.
To shake loose, to kaleidoscope,
to montage elements of time.
I stand in Cosmo Whyte’s Hush Now, Don’t Explain,
seeing layers, ordinary beaded curtains painted
with images of protest. Above are clean, modern lines
of the architectural structure, beyond are the white
walls of the Arts Club gallery. Here is European modernism,
Old Jamaica, newer anti-racism protests.
Here is an homage to Cosmo’s late architect father,
and to the now.
Can montage oppose fascism when its images refuse to dictate?
Let’s let that question hang, keep it as a hope.
What is montage if not just a technique, sometimes a style?
On the other hand,
“Order and hierarchy, do they make up the fascist architectural style?—
Perhaps, but many are looking for quiet in the order,
For a job in the hierarchy,” wrote German Jewish Ernst Bloch in 1932.
He yearned for Spuren, traces, that could inspire a more sharing future,
as well as evoking comfort with remnants of the past. I yearn, too.
Maybe catching glimpses in the beaded curtains, in the more recent
images of anti-racist struggles. In the beauty of the installation.
Not of the Same Time
Maud Lavin
Maud Lavin’s most recent books are the eco-novel Mermaids and Lazy Activists: A Lake Michigan Tale (From Beyond Press) and the poetry collection Swim Lessons (Tulipwood). She is also the author of Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (Yale UP), named a New York Times Notable Book; Clean New World (MIT); Push Comes to Shove (MIT); and Silences, Ohio (Cowboy Jamboree); and the editor of three anthologies. Her writing has appeared in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, Finnish, and Spanish as well as English. A professor emerita at SAIC, she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and other grants--and residencies at Ragdale and the National University of Singapore.