Nik Setiadarma

crumbles of time

Blog

  • Dwelling In Words

    Dwelling In Words

    Narrative was not just a story that flowed, was not just language flowing, but, at its most inventive or reflexive, was also a positioning or mapping of philosophies, a slowing down of that comprehension of one’s having had an experience. I paused reading those lines. I was on my way reading Renee Gladman’s Calamities and… Read more

  • Membicarakan Seni Rupa

    Membicarakan Seni Rupa

    Saya membaca kumpulan esai seni Chabib Duta Hapsari ini karena penasaran dan tidak banyak tahu tentang medan pembicaraan seni rupa, meskipun saya memiliki antusiasme terhadap kerja seni rupa (tapi saya makin yakin lukisan bukanlah obsesi saya; saya lebih suka ilustrasi dan sketsa). Judul bukunya mengambil dari salah satu esai Chabib, Alam Terkembang Hilang Berganti yang… Read more

  • Making Room

    Making Room

    A will to write, to describe, to paint with words, to engage with art, to make one. Amina Cain’s Indelicacy is a projection of a woman and her impulse and desire to write. Her name is Vitória. She works as a janitor in a gallery, and making a close acquaintance with her working partner, Antoinette.… Read more

  • A Spared Life

    A Spared Life

    When suffering seems unbearable, a poet turns to poems and tales. And chants and prays. They are poems. Sometimes a demanding one. But many times a consolation. A few words doesn’t hurt; sometimes they save souls too. Hiromi Ito’s The Thorn Puller translated by Jeffrey Angles clings on the arrangements and chains of those words:… Read more

  • Piercing

    Piercing

    I first encountered Lee Seong-beok’s poem on BTS fandom twitter (*cough* I’m an ARMY myself *cough*) because Kim Namjoon shared a collection of Lee’s poems on his Instagram. Then, it led me to the English translation of “To Whom I Could Give This Pain” published in his collection Ah, Mouthless Things, translated by Eun-Gwi Chung,… Read more

  • On The Rush

    On The Rush

    Why a storyteller writes their story? One starts off writing with a certain zest, but a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life flows, and life is all outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page… Read more