À nos amies argentines dont le peuple vient de se vouer au culte de la tronçonneuse ; à nos amies palestiniennes qui implorent une justice qui ne viendra pas ; à nos amies israéliennes à qui leurs dirigeants préparent un avenir de terreur ; à nos amies ukrainiennes dont le présent est cruel et l’avenir plombé de nuages noirs ; à nos amies russes bâillonnées ; à nos amies d’Iran et d’ailleurs qui affrontent à mains nues l’obscurantisme armé ; à toutes nos amies qui résistent à l’hubris de puissants bouffis d’orgueil et vautrés dans le business ; à celles qui combattent les passions tristes de leurs concitoyens abreuvés de mensonges; aux humains qui continuent de croire que chacun a droit à une vie digne et aux humains qui parfois désespèrent du genre humain – en ce moment il y a de quoi – je dédie trois photos extraites de vieilles archives.
I think about it inside me, biding its time, resisting my call for it — this song that so delighted me, that returned to me twice, unbidden, yesterday, and then went on its way, went back inside me, perhaps never to return. When it was there I wanted to carry it, be carried by it. I did not think of recording the notes, making a digital imprint by which to catch and hold it. I thought that it was a part of me, that it would last forever. Now I’m waiting, wondering where within me it is hiding.
Tree-holes may be filled with a variety of things:
sticky toffee,
used hair band,
ants dividing sugar dutifully amongst themselves,
note that never reached its destination,
squirrel hiding from its companion
to savour the mango on her own,
a single slipper,
a single earring..
…
This sense of loss keeps happening like waves of the sea. There are some days when I wake up that I do not want to wake up and would rather remain in the dream that I was dreaming. More than the dream, I wake up with a Malayalam film song in my head which occupies and populates my inner being for a week; I never want to lose that loop.
Flags blowing in the wind sewn out of used textiles. Bright and faded and worn and starched work wear, a ubiquitous identifier of blue collar histoire ouvrière en France. Blue collar clad hipsters rocking the moral authority of manual labor in Brooklyn. The sound of street level flags rustling in the the wind and billowed out towards pedestrians on creaking temporary flagpoles. Foisted up near current and former headquarters of labor unions on 14th street (the Italian Labor Center, DC 9, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters), we ask what is the place of labor in the contemporary metropolis? Who decides what we make and how?
I woke up having forgotten which way to turn the key to my door.
It was as though somebody had taken apart pieces of me while I had been asleep, only to put me back together, like a puzzle; and in the process had misplaced one of the pieces. So irrelevant it had been, that the puzzle looked complete enough without it, and the solver just walked away shrugging.
Or maybe it was an accident on a microscopic scale, concerning a couple trillion neurons and synapses, and a single fallen martyr.
I returned to Saint-Etienne after a year’s absence. My old studio used to have a municipal alarm system like the one in the image, above. It would blare out with deafening wailing sounds like clockwork on the first Thursday of every month. I usually put on ear protection and worked through the noise. If the alarm test day coincided with a morning when I brought my newborn into the studio, we had to go out of the building and down the street to escape the noise. I can’t imagine living somewhere where air raid sirens are an almost daily occurrence that actually indicates real and present danger.
That evening, when I had finished the drawing, I walked down the hill by my house. I stopped by a tree at the bottom of the hill. It is a tall oak, with arms raised up as if in greeting. You could not hide in this one’s skirts, but her head is almost heart shaped. A plaque says that this is a Hungarian oak, planted in 1918 to celebrate the granting of votes to women. I think of it as a tall woman. Young, by oak standards. Oak trees can live a thousand years. Two thousand, according to Pliny the Elder.
I had hoped to go back to Prague for the last month’s residency, to see what remained of my memories, but it turned out that I could not. I had wanted to approach the city by train again, from the other side, thirty three years later. There would be no radio chiming the hours, no polished wooden corridors or jars of tea in metal holders, perhaps no mystery. A journey of nostalgia, of curiosity?
I covered the couch with a Qashqai rug, a worn runner that my mother no longer wanted, but which was too long for my hallway. It fitted just right. I added some cushions and a blanket. It made a pretty good near relative of the couch in London, at the Freud Museum. It was somewhat creaky, being over a hundred years old, and had un-sprung itself in places, but I like to lie there and stare, out of the window, along my bookshelves, daydreaming.
What use to me the clarity, the lucidity? Classification continues to elude me, and the re-arranged papers form a new pattern on the carpet covered couch, in this endless circle of losing and finding.
The gallery attendant has left the room, a clipboard with her list of visitor numbers lies on her chair, and a book, Instructions fora Heatwave. It looks like a novel, not a handbook. Although we could do with both. The heatwave is much hotter than the one thirty years ago.
Il arrive qu’au cœur des tourmentes et des guerres qui englobent tout de boue, de sang et de mort, on puisse s’arrêter de faire face quelques moments qui deviennent sacrés. A ce moment-là, l’apparition d’un monde en paix reprenant ses couleurs et sa grâce sont sources d’apaisement. A la brutalité viendra toujours s’opposer la douceur dans un interstice de ce qu’on regarde.
It happens that in the midst of turmoil and wars that encompass all mud, blood and death, one can stop to face a few moments that become sacred. At that moment, the appearance of a peaceful world resuming its colors and its grace are sources of appeasement. Brutality will always be opposed by softness in an interstice of what we are looking at.
Letter from Berlin: Ghosts
We were late for the film and the box office had just closed. They said we could have a drink instead. And so we ascended the stairs into the wide space of the bar of Kino International, which was completely empty. Kino International was built in 1961, the same year as the Berlin Wall. It was the main cinema for premieres and award ceremonies under Communism. You could picture it, the slightly sweaty dignitaries in brown suits and fake leather shoes of turgid grey lined up for speeches under the extravagant chandeliers. But this evening there was nobody. The huge yet undaunting space, the rippled wood walls, shiny black tables and red chairs were perfect. This enormous empty room was proportioned for optimism, it was a place to be happily human, for a while at least. I was glad we had missed the film. I looked across the street to the high Soviet scale arch of a metro exit, the only lit building on the street, and watched a couple pause, pace about, embrace. They were tiny under the space of the arch and yet every small gesture was legible.
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J’ai rencontré Lucia en mars 2023 à Rio Gallegos, petite ville sans attrait touristique du sud de la Patagonie. Elle est comédienne et metteuse en scène de théâtre mais, au premier regard, je ne l’aurais pas imaginé : sans apprêt, taille moyenne, cheveux châtains coupés court, rien qui attire la lumière. Elle m’a fait comprendre qu’elle avait quelque chose à me raconter. Je suis revenue le lendemain avec un magnétophone et un micro. Son récit coulait comme une large rivière au cours paisible. Elle s’exprimait dans un espagnol simple et fluide que je pouvais suivre sans grand effort. Ce matin-là, elle portait un petit pullover à col roulé rose, elle avait l’air fatigué.
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Rues de la Fraternité·e, Participatory performance and sound and visual installation
Photographed 3 June 2023, for the Nuit Blanche 2023 and the curatorial project “actes de langage” (acts of language) by simona dvorák & tadeo kohan. The project takes as its subject a place and its name: rue de la Fraternité (Street of Brotherhood) in Montreuil. The aim is to deploy, question, appropriate, update and set in motion the word ‘fraternité’ and what it inspires and evokes.
Through interviews with a group of women, I composed a polyphony of words and testimonies, questioning representations and alternatives to this symbolic and gendered term.
Find a corner on the floor and start building a house of threads.
Think about what it would be like to make a house of threads, sit with the idea for a while, think about the (im)possibilities.
Construct a house from memory, an old home, a part of a home, an imagined home or any other place that comes to mind.