Yoko Ono is finally being recognized as a highly capable installation and performance artist whose mysterious durational gestures—which I often call frozen music—masterfully impersonate simplicity.

As an art critic and curator, I tend to do my traveling through the close study of visual artworks, by gazing at paintings, photographs and especially cinema. All the more charming and enchanting then was my discovery a few years ago of the breathtakingly original travel writing of one Xavier de Maistre.

Sometimes a work’s meaning is lost in translation; other times its essence is accidentally found in it. In the case of the contemplative film experiments of German artists Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet, the familiar territory of conventional storytelling — the art of fabula — has been translated from pure entertainment into pure reverie.