Oliver Basciano reacts to Tonico Lemos Auad exhibition "That which cannot be repaired" curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli

Itching or burning; I’m not sure which, but something is irritating. Perhaps it was the swim earlier. A bracing dive off the harbour side. It was a few caught hours of leisure after three days of lectures, including my own presentation, at the university. The shriek of the cold. Thrashing a hundred metres out, a dash back. The shock of the water subsiding; the numbness setting in. That was hours previous though. Rough towel dry, wander through the city – a coffee and a phone call home with the estimated time of arrival – returning to the hotel, luggage grabbed and now here I sit in Copenhagen airport reading some photocopied notes, a facsimile of Man Ray’s La Photographie n’est pas l’art, flight delayed. I note in the margin ‘gelatin silver print titled Histoire Naturelle, 1937 = Max Ernst’s frottage drawings of 1926 bearing the same title’. I will miss dinner.

I hitch up my trouser leg. There’s a dry patch. A hatched, greying, dry patch. That’s not nice, that doesn’t look good. I’d say it was wound, but nothing is open. The skin looks like it has slightly reconfigured though. The smooth skin, and the slight crop of leg hair looks like it has now woven in on itself. Is that a description? Does that work? I can’t think of other words. It’s strange. I must have picked up a mite – something like that. Tomorrow morning I will go to the doctors. Be on the safe side.

4.45. The flight is still delayed.

I grab a coffee. It tastes bitter. In fact it tastes terrible. Airport coffee. It shouldn’t be this bad. I take a second sip, a third. I can’t take a fourth. It tastes…. almost poisonous. I return to the counter. I don’t complain. What would be the point, but I resent buying a bottle of water to take the taste way, ease the scorching down my throat. The water tastes nice though. So niccceeee.

I’m definitely not feeling good. It happens so fast. Or it takes forever. I can’t tell. I must have a fever. I feel my face tightening, as if something has hitched on to my ears and slowly, but firmly pulling them back, and my cheeks and nose follow suit. My head feels flat. Flat? What does that mean? A sharp pain shoots through my arm. Hell. I’m walking across the terminal. My gait feels strained. What the fuck is happening? Behind me I see a sign for a toilet.

Behind me I see a sign for a toilet.

Behind me I see a sign for a toilet.

Ahead of me is a clothes shop, a high-end brand. Behind me is the sign. The toilets. My left eye is looking the way I’m walking. My right eye has swivelled round and can see the way I’ve come. My stomach lurches one way, then another. It tightens. I might spew. I feel sick coming up my throat. I turn round. This pain in my legs. Fuck. This pain in my legs. Fuck. This. Pain. In. My. Legs.

I head to the toilet. What has happened to my vision? What is this? I rush into a cubicle. So ill. Another gulp of water. I’m trying to lock the cubicle door but I’m having difficulty. My fingers aren’t working too well. I hitch up my trousers again. The dry, hard patch has spread. Really spread. And it’s got harder, bonier. It’s only been ten ___ – fifteen at most – since I first noticed the itch. I undo my trousers. Take them off with a struggle. I’m trying to focus but my sight is getting worse. I sit on the toilet seat. Why can’t I get these trousers off? My legs seem to have got mangled. In fact. And I can’t be sure. I can’t really quite understand what I’m about to say. But I’m not sure which is my left leg and which is my right. One seems to have latched on to the other. Or other one has become the other. What was two has become this broad, narrow seeping column, curling round in front of me. My toes seem stretched. My toes… seem… stretched. Curled. Neatly curled. Stretched and tailed out into a neat curl in front of me. At this point I realise my _______ have broken free and fallen to the floor. A mass of denim far below me. My _______. What are they called?

My head seems to spin. Literally it seems to be spinning. Or rather I can see all round the ________. The cu______. All round at the same time, though my neck seems stiff and rigidly forward looking. I reach out to touch it. But there is nothing. There is nothing to reach with. Just a distant flap, a swoosh. In my mind I think I have arms. But. And I don’t know how to say this without being blunt. I simply don’t. I don’t have ______. I don’t know what is happening to ___. Where are my ___. Where is ___. This is not __. I am no longer __. I __ ___ ___. Internal monologue is replaced by colour. Form, an intense, painful, sensuality to what is happening. My head fills with form. I operate through delirious colour. Through form. Within form.

I’m falling. Falling. I can see light above. And a white cavern below. And water. I land with a plop. The pain of the last ____ goes in an instant. I feel like it’s been ____ here. _____. My swim bladder fills, I regain my balance. It’s a small world. But the water is lovely. It’s so fucking lovely. I try to laugh. Nothing happens. Oxygen fills the side of my head. I breathe. I bump up against the hard white surface. My intestine swells. I breathe.

A small article appeared in Thursday morning’s Politiken. It concerned the discovery by cleaning staff of a seahorse, alive, in one of the toilets in terminal two of Copenhagen’s international airport. The story was picked up by several news agencies and spread quickly online. Questions were asked how the marine animal was carried through security without being detected. The seahorse was taken into the protection of Dyrenes Beskyttelse, the Danish animal welfare society. No photo was taken of the animal so the media use a stock image.

Oliver Basciano is a critic based in London and Deputy Editor of ArtReview and ArtReview Asia.