It’s a bifurcated, bicameral world, isn’t it? Sure it is. If you don’t believe it, lightly push the end of your nose and marvel at how slickly your two haves have come together.
The great Swiss biologist, Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), used to harp on about creaturely “twinned and symmetrical organs” (in clear defiance of New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra’s suggestion that "When you come to a fork in the road, take it"). Despite the homespun anomaly of Yogi’s directional advice, it’s a handed world, committedly stereophonic. That’s the analog view anyhow.
Lee Ka-sing’s photograph of two passages of sparkling water side by side—which are eerily reminiscent of those hand-held stereoscopic viewers so popular with the Victorians—teases our penchant for recollection, for comparison, and our nostalgia for stability. These waters are not the same waters, are they (you can hear Heraclitus insisting you can’t look at the same water twice) ? There’s a slight chop developing in the vista on the right. Okay, so the world is a bit out of register. It’s still built on the nice safe bedrock of two-ness, isn’t it? (day-night, right-left, up-down, top-bottom, good evil….). Alright, it’s really not, but a person has to live. We make fairy takes for ourselves because we have to.
