A few days ago, O. asked about "that show with all those clothes on the floor." Turns out he's thinking about Kai Althoff's installation in Heart of Darkness, an exhibition we saw nearly a year ago.
O can watch a video or read a book over and over, and enjoy it as much the 30th time as the first. I've always assumed kids take pleasure in the familiar and predictable - and that's why I have Cars and Trucks and Things that Go memorized. So why did this installation- which we saw only once - stick in his head?
Althoff's installation was (to me) chaotic and creepy - the Walker website more eloquently describes it as a "sovereign land where bourgeois codes of order, tidiness, and beauty are suspended." Nothing about the exhibition seemed especially appropriate for kids, but maybe that's what made it stick. As a five-year-old figuring out the world, O is deeply invested in "bourgeois codes of order." He wants to know what the rules are, how things work, what to expect.
So I am still curious why he remembered - and wanted to talk about - this installation. Maybe the exhibition was a safe place to experience disorder and messiness. Littered with toys and clothes and crazy craft materials, maybe it looked like a place where adult rules had been abandoned. Maybe it was scary - or maybe it just looked like fun.