Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit

“Arriving to my hotel that night, I was terribly impressed. As much as art was introducing me to new realms of thinking and seeing, it also really seemed to be getting me places. Over 30 years later, and after editing my first recorded conversation with the woman who has since become the grande dame of art collecting, I now realize that it must have felt the same for Ingvild Goetz. The journeys, the encounters, the stimulation she had enjoyed—talking about all this now she emanated a deep gratefulness. Even opening a public museum in one’s front yard is something she could still recommend. And why not? ‘Honestly,’ she says in our interview from page 190, ‘in all the years since, not a single guest has misbehaved.’”

“Moving in bubbles, using knowledge as esoteric power, and making shows about themselves rather than about the artists: seeing some prominent super-curators of younger generations at his graveside, I could not help but think how much [Kasper] König detested some of his profession’s currently rather ubiquitous traits. Yet, he of course had priceless advice for them all: ‘If something in a show is too small, make it smaller,’ he would say. ‘And if it’s too big, make it bigger.’”

“Back at the office that night before we went to print, I taught a little something called nabhi kriya. As the class broke down at the end, sinking into savasana, I contemplated these different paths to the perfect BLAU story. As long as you put the work in, it really doesn’t matter if it’s your navel or your arcline doing the job.”

“That day, we started the conversation that eventually led to the very personal essay Meyer has contributed to this issue of BLAU International. Recounting a brief history of a phenomenon he’s coined the ‘Gay Man’s Castle,’ Meyer insists on the transformative power of personal taste. He shows us how the homes of creatives, how their collections, how even the ceilings above their deathbeds can narrate histories of repression and liberation alike. And how paying tribute to the men who build those ‘castles’ far too often means remembering those we’ve lost. If you ever meet Meyer, you might thank him for this. But never, ever bring up Wuppertal. It will surely harsh his vibe.”

“Recently, the New York Times published a story about BLAU International’s headquarters in Berlin. We only realized how much it must have struck a chord with the readers when the Times subsequently posted one image from the story on their Instagram account. ‘Is it a magazine—or is it a cult?’ was one of the more frequently asked questions the readers seemed to have, the most probable answer being: both.”

“Staying true to my guru’s ‘keep up’ imperative and quite recently having become a yoga teacher myself, I continued to teach through the production period, having a crew of yogis doing body drops and chanting ‘Har’ in our office even the night before we went to print. Why, you could ask, is keeping up so important? If you keep up a daily practice, you will eventually start to align. If you are aligned, things start to happen. Not to you, but for you.”

“Three hours later—some part of which I’d spent fearing for the life of the 76-year-old artist when he fell off a table during an extended force-feeding session—sat down with the two performers over red wine and pizza. I was grateful not only that Paul and Lilith had showered extensively before dinner, but also that the two—perhaps the greatest, most convincing, and most abysmally terrifying pair since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—were now in a state of absolute lightness. All the perturbance from that afternoon had evaporated. They seemed free and familiar, like 8-year-old best friends at a birthday party, and you could tell from the faces of the other dinner guests that their catharsis had clearly rubbed off.”