Bilateral Time Slicer Intermix, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 2017

21c Museum Hotels is a combination contemporary art museum and boutique hotel chain. We visited the Nashville branch of this chain that was launched by Laura Lee Brown, heiress to the Jack Daniels fortune. There are currently ten hotels-museums in the chain. A venue in Chicago is opening soon and a Saint Louis branch is scheduled to open by the end of the year.

In all its venues, this is the only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art of the 21st century. The museum is open free of charge 24/7. All of the hotels are built in salvaged and repurposed old downtown buildings. The one in Saint Louis is slated for the old downtown YMCA building.

The intermix of faces in the bilateral time slicer include Anne, Becca, Corwin, Rey and myself. Think of it as a photo-booth, with extra artistic help. Anne was the first person to use this machine and for the longest time, hers was the only one displayed. She was eventually able to coax the rest of us in joining her on camera. With each new face, older images (in time, not age), are then pushed outwards, I managed to snap this photo, before my face was acquired by the AI.

We had lunch in Germantown, one of the older and now trendier neighborhoods in Nashville. We ate takeout Thai for dinner. With the game Gizmos, Rey took the gloves off on us today. It wasn’t pretty and he wants to play Scrabble next.

Rey and Becca are in full house hunting mode. They are focusing on the area near where they rent, which is very cosmopolitan. Unfortunately, ICE is preying on this diversity. Trump is complaining about the homelessness in San Francisco and LA, but the homelessness in Nashville rivals what I’ve seen on the left coast. Here is a better photo of Corwin, the man of the moment. Left Off! Power to the people! Or am I reading too much into that little fist?

Corwin