Culture | New Words For New Beginnings.

I recently had the chance to travel to Istanbul for a client presentation. It would be the first time I'd be making the journey to the Sublime Port, so I thought to extend my trip post presentation by a few days and experience all the sights & sounds of this fabled city.

Things had been rather tumultuous back home, so a few days off would be a much needed respite. And naturally, the first thing I did was to do the rounds of all the museums and art galleries. One sculpture at the Istanbul Modern caught my particular attention....

Jia Shan Shi #121

Jia Shan Shi #121, or 'Artifical Rock #121', by Zhan Wang takes Chinese culture and philosophy into a cool, abstract space. In traditional lore, rocks represent a connection between humans and nature. Building on this concept, Wang moulds sheets of stainless steel onto rocks and brings them together - burnishing and polishing till the end result is a glittering, contemporary subversion of the traditional. According to the artist, this enables viewers to "refresh their imagination by changing their perception of the spiritual".

That got me thinking. Staring at this fascinating sculpture gave me pause for reflection - both literally and figuratively, on the notion of psyche and inspiration. What is perception, and what does it take to alter it? Is it the appearance of the new & unusual to unexpectedly jolt us? Or is it a constant state of receptiveness to new ideas?

I went for the latter.

And when I casted about for a word to best describe this, I drew up blank.

So, like most everything I do, I created my own:

Liquine /lɪkwʌɪn/

adjective I choose to define Liquine as a free-flowing state of consciousness. A mindset that is soft, dreamy & reflective, yet steel-cast & strong-willed. To be liquine is to not just be open to new ideas, but also to deftly-but-unapologetically reflect, twist and subvert them into brand new concepts.

Much like the process that birthed it.

Hardly surprising that I would come up with a brand new word to describe my latest mercurial mood.