Even love needs something to touch

César Aira, waits for his issues of Artforum to arrive. 

Eventually (but this happened years ago: I am trying to recover a memory that I've half lost along the bumpy trajectory of my life) I began to get tired of waiting, tired of the psychic space waiting put me in. I wanted to adopt a more virile stance. Living in a state of expectation was eroding my nerves, distracting me from my occupations or directly nullifying them. Nothing was left. Waiting is an empty waste of time.

[I learned about waiting from my mother. Events of note occur very occasionally; waiting fills the void that is the rest of her life. Maybe this is where my interest in whitespace started, trying to shape the vast in-between. One can approach waiting with either anxiety or patience. I have watched my mother be consumed by the emptiness. There is nothing left for me but patience.]

Artforum, by César Aira, is a series of anecdotes and vignettes documenting his relationship with the art magazine as a physical, print publication, distinct from its content. It is a near obsession that borders on object fetishization, but it isn't quite that. Nor is his the studied madness and attention to detail of the serious collector.

This charming book encapsulate the joy of thingness, with all the emotional connection and existential resonance a material thing can bring. It's the thrill of the hunt for an issue, it's the dogged pursuit, a logic-defying method of acquisition, faith in serendipity. 

(I think of all the times I could easily have ordered a book, but I deferred the process because I wanted to find the book, or it to find me, even this book, for example; I checked numerous online inventories, and planned a trek to the shop, scheduling it among other responsibilities, hoping it would not be too late, that no one else would buy it in the meantime, undergoing this elaborate mental process, delaying gratification, not just so I could have it, but so I could have it in my own way.)

One can say that they are only material objects, that other things bring true happiness. But would that be true? There always has to be something material, even love needs something to touch. And in my proceeds of that joyful day, the material was so entwined with the spiritual that it transcended itself, without ceasing to be material. I won't talk abut the pen, I would get too carried away. But that transcendence was pretty obvious in the magazines. They were paper and ink, and they were also ideas and reveries. They reproduced the dialectic of art, with as many or more attributes as art itself. Before, I spoke about the "material trace." It was more than that: the word is "luxury." Material made of spirit is the luxurious border where reality communicates with utopia.

Excerpts

• From "The Sacrifice"
• "Twenty-four Issues of Artforum" (complete chapter)