Reversible Destiny

When I first encountered Arakawa & Madeline Gins at their VCU lecture two years ago, I was certain that something had gone terribly awry. Talk of Reversible Destiny, their decision not to die, an hour-long film about a drunken 12-year-old boy, and their pursuit of building a hospital without traditional treatment facilities such as MRI's, CAT scans and X-ray machines had me caught so off-guard that I missed the point of much of what they initially had to say. To this day, I still consider them fairly bewildering.

One of the things that resonated with me was their passion for innovation. I remember Madeline poignantly decrying that "if you must paint, paint in the air!" Their tenacity for living life in the moment and for the moment is something many of us take for granted, so it's no surprise that their unwillingness to die might seem to many of us as a bit extreme. While most of us might be trying to catch up with them on that point for the better part of our lives, we, in fact -- thanks to Pioneer -- can paint in the air.