I know the residency is over for me and that I should have posted something for you guys some time ago but you should know that I was caught up in a delicious and oh so frightening storm. A hurricane (did you know that horizontal hurricanes are possible ? well you can even count that one in), a tornado, a typhoon, a thunderstorm, a thunderlessestorm, a sand storm, a rain storm, a stormless storm, a… despite appearances I’m actually not a weather specialist so I have no clue what other storms might exist but man ! What a shit storm it was ! (please do note that during my stay, my favorite words were : « man » and « shit ». I do not know why, i do not know how but I do know that I used them for nearly everything ; to such an extent that even the four wondrous other residents a.k.a Karin, Eva, Ida and Salome, noticed I possessed a strong inclination for these two versatile words.
Man, what a true shit storm it was (here they are again!) ! Outside, you (european residents or all that had a really shitty a.k.a rainy month of May) must have all noticed it. Hail, thunder and buckets of water just pourred on our heads on a daily basis. The sun was non-existent and the clouds ever too present. It’s interesting, don’t you find, that once you’re away from home you develop a stronger sensibility to the weather. I mean, isn’t it simply fascinating to see that I’m litteraly begining my first and only blog post about my stay at the residency with the weather forecast and a soon to be happening really shitty analogy with my mental state. Because, oh man, my head was all up in the clouds (it was going to be shitty, I warned you a couple of lines above, and it’s not over yet ! Because shit always has it coming), I mean really lost up there and twisted and turned by the winds and the atmospheric pressures. My brain just became sky, (w.o.w and I thought I could not do worst), but not any sky ! it became (but of course) the sky looming over our heads.
I was all over the place with excitement, burning of impatience, of ideas, my mental health was not healthy anymore it was…. Ok, i’m exagerating a bit and this is getting a bit out of control. But the feeling remains, that I was caught up in a massive swirl of joy and creation. I’m barely coming down now, as I struggle to write this post.
As you know, Karin and I were « Chez Monique », what an amazing space ! First off I could take everything over, sit outside in the rain and smoke my cigarettes, greet the circonspect villagers every morning, listen to the local radio (with Eva who could ‑unfortunately hear everything from her room) blaring ads and music from another dimension, I had access to the famously called « fundus », a room filled with objects and material the residency put at our disposal and in which I relished every morning : tubes, paper, tiles, textile, lamps, books, spray cans, unidentified woodden and metalic objects… I found rolls and scrolls to print and pimp ! Man ! If I could have, I think I would have emptied the whole fundus !
You must know that I love second hand objects, flea markets and junk yards ; I obsess over the forgotten, abandonned and disarray for there is no limit to their reimagination.
Broken glass becomes stained glass, leather bags are coloured and cut up into giraffes, hangers transform into lights, books turn into stop motion animations, tiles are invested with moods, bottles host octopuses. I strive to leave nothing I find inert. « Chez Monique » mutated into a lab, where space and time were constantly faced and challenged.
The residency plunged me into a mental tempest which I tried to tame with discipline and routine : every morning I wrote down my dreams, pimped at least one fundus creature, carved one piece of wood, to then print in the afternoon and write/doodle down a daily log per evening. I seldomn left the house for it came to be, for me, a sort of « Howl’s Moving Castle », where each physical and/or imaginary door led to promised lands of creation.
Finished off my stay by turning « Chez Monique » inside out, and taking over the street, (on an oh so luckily sunny day) it was liberating ! If only my work had wings I would have set it free ! Instead, I put it all back where I found it, and I hope some of the next residents will enjoy superimposing meaning and ideas upon it, pushing this intaglio ever so further.
Meteorologically unstable love and shit to all.
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